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Parksville wants infrastructure plan

Jun 8, 2016 | 4:13 PM

Parksville’s mayor sees an asset management strategy as a critical tool for the city.

Staff has been asked by council to form a draft long-term infrastructure replacement and renewal plan.

Marc Lefebvre says it’s critical to bring the city’s upwards of $400 million worth of infrastructure under a single comprehensive plan.

“The federal government has made it quite clear that we must be in a position to optimize and justify what we’re doing and why we’re doing it and what the impact is, so this will go a long way to helping us accomplish that,” said Lefebvre.

Lefebvre says an asset management strategy is also important to save money on infrastructure costs and limit large jumps in local property taxes.

“You pay now or you pay later and the problem is, if you’re not anticipating and you don’t have life cycle maintenance and you pay later, you pay a heck of a lot more. So I truly believe we’re doing the right thing.”

Lefebvre points out that the city has already made signficiant in-house strides, including re-costing its infrastructure inventory every year.

He expects the draft report to come back before council in the next few months.