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Roughly $320,000 slated for Orangeville’s Operations Centre

May 6, 2021   ·   0 Comments

By Sam Odrowski

Orangeville’s Operations Centre is getting a new roof.

Council approved $206,490 in funding from its general capital reserve to cover the cost during their regular meeting on April 26.

The facility, which is 12,400 square feet in size, houses trucks and heavy equipment as well as operations staff for roads, water works, and parks.

The building’s roof received an inspection last spring, at which time the roof was deemed to be at the end its life and in need of replacement.

The roof, which was built back in the 1980s, had multiple leaks and there’s considerable moisture under the roof’s membrane. The contractor who built it at that timed used an older type of insulation, which is acidic, and causes corrosion when water comes into contact with it.

Roughly $120,000 was originally budgeted to replace the roof membrane, but after further analysis it was determined that the entire roof, all the way down to the steel deck would need to be replaced, costing approximately $317,000, which led Council to withdraw $206,490 out of its general capital reserve.

“I usually don’t support items that come that aren’t in the budget, but this is a good case of what exactly our reserves are for,” said Coun. Debbie Sherwood, before putting a motion forward to approve the additional funding.

“Reserves are for maintaining our assets and so I would be very much in favour of that.”

Following the Town’s general manager of infrastructure services, Ray Osmond’s brief summary of the project to Council, explaining the reason for the increased costs, Coun. Grant Peters asked if from a structural perspective, could solar panels be installed on the new roof in the future.

Osmond responded that this was part of Town staff’s investigation and a report from 2010 on the Operations Centre’s structure determined that solar panels could be considered in the future.

“We can certainly move that forward if need be and take a look at solar panels. That roof will be quite capable of handling a certain level of weight – a certain kind of panel – when we deem it necessary to do that,” he noted.

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