Budget Setting & Benchmarking
Well-managed capital projects begin with a clear definition of the core objectives (the “must haves”), a target budget that is based upon “must have” design elements and a review of the documented costs of recent, similar projects undertaken in other nearby communities of similar size (benchmarking). Unfortunately, these critical early steps appear not to have been undertaken by District administration for the Firehall replacement project.
Despite the identification in 2025 of a "preferred" design option for Firehall replacement, neither a quorum of Council nor our CAO have yet:
a) conducted a basic benchmarking exercise or
b) identified a target budget range that is tailored to actual taxpayer capacity.
The Good News? Other communities have "benchmarked" actual projects in our region and have committed to match project scale and budget to actual community and taxpayer financial capacity.
See the example on the right.
