Prince George City Council has once again voted down a motion to have a report returned on options to potentially avoid a two-year shutdown at the Aquatic Centre.
In April 2024, City Council approved $37 million in facility upgrades for the Aquatic Centre.
In October, the City announced the Aquatic Centre would be closing for two years, effective January 1st, 2026, to complete these upgrades.
Council originally discussed the issue of the closure at the regular meeting on November 3rd, with Council voting the motion down with a 3-6 vote.
Under Section 131 of the Community Charter, the Mayor may require Council to reconsider a matter that was previously voted upon.
According to a staff report to Council, this authority is exercised to ensure Council had the opportunity to consider new information and updated public input.
“I would really like the administration to take the next couple of weeks to work with all the teams to see that under this current budget that we can indeed perhaps phase the program,” said Mayor Simon Yu.
“Perhaps instead of two years of completely shut down, perhaps we can turn to three to four months of a shut down every year during the summer, middle of May to September for the next few years.”
Yu also went over the phases of the project and their costs, and had said that with a grant, the actual cost was $43 million.
He was later corrected by Director of Finance and IT Services Kris Dalio, who said the $6.3 million grant was included in the cost of the project, which is in fact $37 million.
Yu also referenced a 2016 report assessing the existing pools at the time.
“I was looking for new information, that you’ve presented tonight, you’ve got a few questions, but I don’t see new information that you’ve presented tonight,” said Councillor Ron Polillo.
After Mayor Yu said he did, Polillo said that was not his interpretation.
“You’ve presented a few questions here tonight, but in my opinion, it’s not new information,” Polillo said.
“What I’m going to propose, is that we call the question, and we take a vote on this right now, and prevent 30 minutes, 45 minutes, an hour, and hour and 15, and hour and a half of discussion, because we’ve had this discussion, not once, not twice, but three times, now four times.”
After a brief discussion on procedure, a motion to call the question failed, allowing discussion to continue.
Councillor Trudy Klassen also referenced the 2016 report, which she said recommends against an extended closure.
“Often, I know for myself, I’m very impulsive and I can sometimes just jump into an idea and run with it and then suddenly I have new information and I think I should pull back on it, I think this is one of those cases.” she said.
Councillor Tim Bennett said while no one wants to see the pool closed for two years, a similar conversation was held when the item first came to council.
“I remember the conversation when this first came forward, that Council really had two options, we could do the phases in a slower approach, but that would come at a greater cost,” he said.
Bennett asked what the consequences of delaying would be.
Director of Civic Facilities and Events Andy Beesley shared his thoughts on the discussion.
“Work is already underway at the pool, they’re doing destructive testing, that means they’re destructing bits, they’re not destructing the whole structure, but if you look, there’s holes in the walls, they’re already looking inside and getting ready to go,” he said.
“If time is needed to get new eyes to re-examine the existing work, one of the questions I have is do I need to halt the project? If so, I think, for due diligence, we’re going to need to examine the legal implications of cancelling or changing the current contracts, because they’ve scheduled their work life over the next two years based on the contracts, what they understand the work to be.”
Beesley added they would need to ensure the $6.3 million grant would not be at risk, as well as many other factors. He said spreading the work out over a longer time would “almost certainly” mean a higher budget would be needed.
Councillor Cori Ramsay said keeping the pool open is not an unrealistic ask, but it’s an unrealistic deliverable.
“When you look at the work that is required, the amount of work that we are doing to make sure that we get another 20 years of life out of this asset, to build a brand new pool, we’re seeing this with our peer municipalities, it’s going to cost upwards of $100 million, more than that,” she said
“This is a good price tag for this build, I understand that that’s an uncomfortable comment, it might make some people squirm because $37 million is a lot of money, but it’s less than half of what it would be if we had to build this asset from scratch.”
Councillor Susan Scott agreed, saying “it’s never going to cost less.”
Councillor Kyle Sampson said he didn’t know what would be feasible in two weeks.
“I don’t see us getting substantive information beyond what we’ve already received from staff in a two week period on a project that’s taken almost a decade to completely get to this point of people are working in the facility already,” he said.
The motion was defeated again with another 3-6 vote, with Council voting the same as they did at the previous meeting; Mayor Yu, Klassen and Councillor Brian Skakun voting for, with Councillors Bennett, Frizzell, Polillo, Ramsay, Sampson, and Scott voting against.
On a separate item on the agenda, Council approved the purchase of three starting blocks for the Canfor Leisure Pool, bringing the total there up to the six needed to host competitions.
Other items discussed at tonight’s meeting included a “Fast-Track PG” program to speed up permit approvals, and an update to the extreme weather response plan.
The post No changes in votes as Council discusses Aquatic Centre closure again appeared first on My Prince George Now.
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