Bayham okays reduced scope for community centre improvements

Bayham councillors, in a split 3-2 vote on Thursday, April 6, approved proceeding with improvements to the Straffordville Community Centre at a cost of $2.3-million, but that doesn’t include a $200,000 contingency fund included in the original estimates for the work.

The original expected cost of the improvements, both inside and outside the community centre, had been just over $2-million when the project was first approved in 2019. Bayham received a federal Investing in Canada Infrastructure Fund (ICIF) grant that would cover about $600,000 of that cost.

After delays caused by COVID and other factors, Bayham recently called tenders to undertake actual construction of the improvements, but after they were opened, the cost had jumped to $2.9-million.

Staff presented a variety of financial options involving either proceeding with the complete project as originally envisioned, or options to remove portions of it to reduce costs in one case to just under the original cost estimate, but each involved the contractor not encountering circumstances that required dipping into a $200,000 contingency fund included as part of the tenders.

Some councillors worried, though, that cutting back too much could result in the ICIF grant being revoked.

More details in the April 12 edition of The Aylmer Express.