As a small municipality, we…

As a small municipality, we agree that there is a need for the recording of assets and strategic planning of the infrastructure of the municipality but there is limited capacity, from a staff perspective to complete this work within the time frame established. There is the question of technical expertise and whether or not the need to engage consultants to assist with the process. The signing off of an engineer poses a problem with a small municipality if they do not have an engineer on site; an engineer would have to do an in-depth re-examination of methodology resulting in higher fees. The ongoing issue of data collection, service level factors and maintenance will impact staffing levels.

The municipality disagrees that there will be unlikely to be any significant financial impacts. As the AMP was implemented in 2009, there were no set regulations and it is felt that with these changes, that municipalities will have to go back to the beginning and redo their AMP's to follow the required regulations being discussed, which will impact both staff time and availability and funds. We understand that there is a need to create conformity and comparability amongst municipal AMPs but is too prescriptive, affordable and difficult to comply within the time frame presented.

These are ambitious timeframes that are very aggressive and will put additional pressure on small municipalities that do not have the staff needed to complete it. Other concerns are in regard to climate mitigation costs and activities, which take the focused management of physical assets and services they provide into an additional function that duplicates the Official and Strategic Plans. The financial plan looks to duplicate the municipal budgeting and forecast needs. The discussion on service level analysis and lifecycle costing for every asset owned will be very timely and consuming for the small municipality and costly.

The proposed regulation greatly increases the responsibility of staff to meet them and will need additional resources to do these plans either internally or through consultants. There will be increased skills needed and funds to pay for these skills.

We look forward to hearing more and being part of these discussions as we evolve.

[Original Comment ID: 210241]