Bluewater Council Forms Committee To Look At Leasing Agreements For Municipally-Owned Facilities

by Bob Montgomery

Bluewater council has formed a committee to look at the leasing agreements it has with various service groups or special interest groups for municipally-owned facilities.

Bayfield ward councillor Bill Whetstone is one of the councillors on the committee, and he says a lot of leasing agreements are coming due shortly. Council wants to assess potential costs in keeping the facilities going in the future and it was decided that municipalities and taxpayers shouldn't be responsible for the capital costs of keeping the facilities going. So new leases are being developed and standardized across the municipality.

Whetstone says the committee will be meeting with all of the special interest groups that are using the facilities about some of the challenges they're facing and how they can come up with a lease that allows them to continue to provide the level of service they provide to the community without the municipality being responsible for capital costs.

Whetstone says some of those capital costs could be fairly expensive, but he also points out some of those costs are based on industry standards. For instance, an elevator like the one in the town hall might cost as much as one hundred thousand dollars to replace, and based on industry standards it should last maybe ten years if it goes up and down about two hundred times a day. But the elevator in the Bayfield Town Hall likely goes up and down about twenty times in four months, so any capital costs should reflect that. So that’s the sort of thing they want to consider in a new leasing agreement and the committee will look at those factors and bring a recommendation back to council.