April 27, 2023 · 0 Comments
By JAMES MATTHEWS
The Town of Mono will serve up a couple of new tennis courts this year.
The project was almost scuttled because of increased construction costs. Council heard during its regular meeting on April 25 that some corners needed to be cut to cover some of the over-runs, but was able to approve the project.
Council supported Mono Tennis Club’s proposal in September 2019 to construct two new accessible tennis courts at Mono Centre.
The town and the club banded together in November 2019 and applied for $517,000 from Investing in Canada Infrastructure Program (ICIP) Community, Culture and Recreation to finance the courts and related infrastructure.
ICIP is a cost-sharing infrastructure program with 40 per cent provided by the federal government, 33 per cent by the provincial government, and about 27 per cent by the municipality.
Mono received word in January 2021 that their application was successful.
The federal and provincial governments would kick in $379,116 towards the project with the Town of Mono and the Mono Tennis Club sharing the balance by contributing $68,941.95 each.
Between February 2021 and January 2023, numerous meetings were held between the Mono Tennis Club, Karen Rosenbrock, a landscape architect, town engineer R.J. Burnside Ltd., and town staff.
The tender package was released on March 9 and four bids were received April 3.
The estimated $517,000 construction cost for two tennis courts and related infrastructure was created before the COVID-19 pandemic. And the construction industry has experienced considerably inflated costs since the coronavirus pandemic.
So it wasn’t a surprise that the low bid by Cambium Site Contracting Inc. was for $733,306 and about $216,000 more than the estimated cost.
Recognizing the financial challenges between the lowest submitted bid price, the money allotted for the project, and the desire to move forward with a portion of the work, town staff and Mono Tennis Club executive members agreed to remove the court lighting from the project.
There remains the possibility to install lighting in the future.
That saved $146,486. Another $9,000 was saved by having town staff remove a group of cedars which was originally written into the tender.
The removal of these two items from the tender equates to savings of $155,486.
With the removal of these two items, the new cost for the project equates to $577,820. That’s about a 12 per cent increase over the estimate as opposed to the previous 42 per cent.
Parks-in-Lieu is a fund for park development. Council could take the remaining $60,000 from that purse.
Councillor Melinda Davie applauded the cost-cutting efforts that made the project possible.
Coun. Ralph Manktelow wondered if it would be economically advantageous to install the lighting and resurface existing courts now as opposed to waiting until next year or the following year. Prices may increase in that time, he said.
“We wouldn’t necessarily feel any financial repercussions for holding off on it at this time,” said Kim Heaton, the town’s recreation director.