The City of Prince George had almost $70 million in approved spending for capital projects that was carried over from 2024 to 2025, the Standing Committee on Finance and Audit heard at its meeting on Wednesday, June 25.
Director of finance and IT services Kris Dalio told the committee that it takes more than one calendar year to finish some projects.
“So, if we have unfinished work by Dec. 31, we have what’s called a carry forward into the next year,” he said.
“Just a quick note, we can’t really change the course on this. A lot of these contracts have been signed while the work has already been started. This isn’t for council to necessarily say ‘we won’t continue this project.’”
By far the largest carry forward was for the building envelope replacement for the Aquatic Centre. Of the total $36,751,425 in spending that has been approved for that project, just $541,233 had been spent by the end of 2024, leading to a carryover of $36,210,191.
None of the approved $812,207 in spending for the renewal of building components at the Aquatic Centre had been spent by the end of 2024.
Just $84,289 of the budgeted $4.05 million for critical street light and traffic signal replacement had been spent.
There was around $3.3 million in carry forward for sanitary lagoon re-routing and around $3.2 million for sanitary forcemain and lift station renewal.
Next to some of the entries on the list of carry forwards were asterisks, which note that remaining unspent amounts were relinquished.
Dalio said those relinquished amounts represent projects that either finished under budget or had their scope change.
“We have a budget, we go to execute it and at some point when we’re doing our carry forwards for Dec. 31, we might know for a fact that we aren’t going to spend all of the money and that we know we’re going to come in under budget,” he said.
“We relinquish the remaining funds and put it back in the reserve that it was initially funded from to fund other projects.”
Relinquished funds include around $3.1 million for mobile equipment replacement, around $1.06 million for sewer equipment replacement, $739,037 for sanitary forcemain and lift station upgrades, $150,000 for wastewater treatment plant renewal and $369,038 for mobile equipment replacement for the water utility.
Total relinquish funds equalled almost $7.2 million.
