Treasurer Sean Crozier reported on the draft before handing over the report to Mai Abdou of Public Sector Digest
Mai Abdou presented on the need for a Draft Asset Management plan for the Township of Whitewater Region.
“They matter because they affect the services we provide our citizens.” she said. “All of your assets are just conduits for your services.”
She said there were three main factors that were considered: cost, performance, and risk.
“It’s important to have somewhere where this information is consolidated.” She said. “All that an AMD is trying to do is guide your budget, see what kind of deficit you’;re in and provide a business case for a longterm investments you need to make.”
She said the first deadline was this July in 2022, and said that the Township was “already far ahead” of the first deadline by having all the assets in the plans.
She said that in 2025, the Township would have to define “the target levels of service” and what they would provide in the future.
“It does not give you a list of assets to do work to, due to the living nature of this document, it’s always changing. The AMP is meant to be a little higher than that.”
She said the latest year data was 2020, with a current replacement of 480million, with the majority going towards wastewater and stormwater.
“This is quite the investment we are making.” she said. “It is important that we are proactively managing these assets, as there’s a lot of money tied to these assets.”
“More than half of the costs were made from user defined costs, and they tried to minimize relying on inflation, which she said was “rarely reliable.”
“Age will typically over-inflate how things are.” she said. “you will know how reliable this is because the data was collected.
She also recommended the township standardize how the process is updated.
“It is a lot of effort to do.” she said. “if there is no one person or team to do it, it will fall for the wayside.”
She also recommended a public engagement opportunity for the Township to engage with the process.
“The data is meant to change year after year, we should continue to feed it good information to make sure
Councillor Olmstead asked: “Have you seen a township yet that has not itself all together?”
“Only the municipalities that we’ve worked with in Alberta. “ she said. “Every municipality we’ve worked with in Ontario is operating at a deficit.”
“It’s scary, but it’s not unique to the Township of Whitewater.” she said.
“Does this make the Township compliant for July 1st?” Councillor Charlene Jackson.
Abdou confirmed that it did.
“We have a lot of geared to income seniors who have trouble affording our water services.” Mayor Moore asked “Do you know of any other municipalities that are granting or doing anything to help out citizens?”
“it’s more of the affordability aspect of those services.” She said. “Staff will have to put some kind of plan for that. I have not across another municipalities that does that.”
Mayor Moore thanked Abdou for her presentation.
