Windsor city council has given the thumbs up to more than a dozen projects as part of the city's enhanced capital budget.
Mayor Drew Dilkens says $6.4-million as been approved as a budget placeholder for 14 projects, ward funds and administration costs which, until 2019, were outside of the five-year window council is allowed to operate within.
Dilkens says the five-year limitation helps keep council fiscally responsible.
"Council has an internal policy, and for very good reason, that we will not spend money that's in the budget beyond the five-year window," he says. "We don't have the cash flow to do it, number one, and it's probably not prudent to go that far and the longer you do it the more you have to self-finance internally to pay for the project today that you're actually not going to pay back for five or six years."
Dilkens says these projects were approved in principle in the 2018 budget.
"City council approved a variety of different items, millions of dollars worth of items," he says". It's notionally approved at budget time, but then what has to happen is a report has to come back releasing the funds and as long as those projects are tendered out and come back within the allotted budget administration can proceed to deliver on those projects throughout the city."
Windsor city administration at a council meeting on December 17, 2018 (Photo by AM800's Zander Broeckel)
The city has included an enhanced capital budget within its overall capital budget since 2013.
Dilkens says, ultimately, the plan is to start thinking 10 years out with some wiggle room.
This coming budget year we're going to have a seven year budget. Next year will be an eight year budget, up to a 10 year budget. You'll make notional allocations and you'll approve a capital budget for 10 years, but I guarantee by the time year 10 comes the council of the day will start re-jigging what's in that budget to make sure that they can meet the priorities of today as opposed to what was approved 10 years before," says Dilkens.
The largest project in the latest list to be approved is a major reconstruction of Byng Rd. from Lappan Rd. to Melinda Rd., which is valued at just under $1.4-million.