City council in North Battleford made a decision at Tuesday’s council meeting to uphold the demolition order on a dilapidated property at 1102 - 106th St. The decision came after council had . . .
North Battleford city council has agreed to a new commemorative recognition policy to honour members of the community. At their Tuesday council meeting, council approved the policy which covers . . .
Holm’s response indicated there was still much up in the air with respect to the hardest hit properties. He noted that once a fire is out, he has a “bit of a process” to follow with respect to going through a demolition order. If a property is structurally unsound while a fire is going on — “if it was going to take out houses on either side of it,” Holm said — he can take some measures to have the property destroyed. He had the ability under the Fire Safety Act to make an immediate order. The issue was getting services disconnected, Holm said. If he couldn’t get the services disconnected prior to the fire being extinguished, they could not knock the building down.
That bad news was revealed Monday as councillors decided on awarding the tender for the sewage force main and sewer trunk lining portion of the project. Council awarded the tender to the lowest of three bidders, Hamm Construction Ltd. of Saskatoon, in an amount up to $8,928,500 including PST and not including GST. This was on the recommendation of project engineer, AECOM Canada Ltd. That tender bid actually fell below the initial price estimates by about $122,000. It was the costs for the rest of the project that produced the headaches for council on the evening. According to the memo provided by Director of Operations Stewart Schafer to council, Contract 1 for the sewage pumping station is now estimated at $5,751,454, almost $2 million more than initial estimates.
Following the presentation, council then met in a half-hour in-camera session behind closed doors to discuss the issue further. In the end, there was no public decision announced and it is not immediately clear in the aftermath of the meeting what the next steps are for the city in addressing the dilapidated property. The city has been attempting for months to take action against the property, starting with the issuing of a demolition order on Aug. 27, 2020. The order came in the wake of a building inspection report from Aug. 25, 2020, that cited numerous deficiencies, including broken windows, cracked and missing siding, broken doors, boarded up windows and doors, concerns that the garage wall could collapse, and problems with the interior including broken or missing light fixtures.
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In particular, he wanted to know how council might “waive the requirement to have these companies previously work on a large-scale project” — which seems to have tripped up the ability of local firms to make a bid. Ironstand said he was not asking to give the project to local companies — just to give them the opportunity to bid. The local companies are “our tax base,” he said, adding they would also be in a better position to fix problems later. “If something goes wrong, the local companies will be there within hours,” said Ironstand. But City Manager Randy Patrick responded they can’t give a local preference to this project.
Mayor David Gillan and Councillor Kelli Hawtin have agreed to be the council representatives on the committee. For administration, the committee will include Director of Parks and Recreation Cheryl DeNeire and there is be one more representative to be named, likely to be one of the city planners. The committee’s formation was prompted by a request to honour the late NHL player Colby Cave with a memorial and a street naming near the Access Communications Centre. The plan is to come up with a comprehensive policy where the city can honour individuals. “I think we’re all in agreement to move forward with this,” was the comment from Mayor David Gillan. The motion carried unanimously.