The city of Prince George knows it has to fund a roughly $20.5 million gap in its infrastructure, but the question is how and when.
A recent presentation to city council's finance and audit committee outlined the work done by asset management staff over the past couple of years to estimate the necessary investment to keep the infrastructure above and below the ground from falling apart.
The city owns assets - including fleet, administration, parking and recreation facilities as well as water and sanitary infrastructure - with a replacement value of approximately $2.3 billion.
The city should plan to spend an average of $35 million per year on infrastructure, said asset manager Frank Blues.
"The actual spending on a year-to-year basis will be based on the demand at that time. And so it's a combination of what's in the bank, what's our funding strategy, what's our borrowing strategy, how do we want to proceed with this."
Currently, an average of $14.4 million is reinvested in the city's infrastructure on a yearly basis, leaving a funding gap of about $20.5 million.
"We didn't get here overnight and I don't think we should be looking to solve this overnight either," said Blues, who will be returning to the committee in a few weeks with another report that looks at possible financing models. "And I'm not suggesting the sky is falling but I'm saying we're certainly due for an appropriate planning strategy, funding strategy and then maintenance strategies to begin to address these kinds of issues that we see."
The last time council received an update on roads and pipelines was back in 2012, where they learned they needed to up the spending on roads to at least $7 million. Council passed the 2014 budget last November with the required road rehab funds.
"So there's one where we didn't do it overnight, but we did it pretty quickly," said Mayor Shari Green. "But this is a bigger number, so this is going to be a little harder to do."
