Sometimes expectations can come back to bite you.
About 18 months ago when the Town of Okotoks broached the idea of building a boarded outdoor rink, the project was largely well received as many people, including some on council, suggested the absence of such an amenity was a hole in the recreation inventory for a town of this size. At the time, the project was estimated to cost $500,000.
Fast-forward a year-and-a-half and the budget has ballooned to twice that amount, prompting a round of second guessing fueled by concerns that $1 million is too steep a price to pay for an outdoor rink. Given the Town received four bids for the project at St. John Paul II Collegiate, it would appear that seven figures is the going rate to construct such an amenity.
The bigger issue — and this is where the Town ends up wearing it — is not how much a new rink is going to cost, but how much higher the bill has grown compared to the original estimate. A Town report suggests the increase may be due to a combination of inflation and a backlog of construction projects.
There’s no doubt that inflation is having an impact on pretty much everything, but it's hard to see materials and/or labour having escalated to that extent over a relatively short period of time, and it's also difficult to believe a construction backlog would have that kind of effect.
Those factors would have played a role in the higher cost, but more than likely, the real culprit is the original price tag, for whatever reason, was simply too low. We’re not sure whether it was a ballpark figure not fully costed out or one set artificially low in order to get the project rolling, but what we do know is the Town was unable to deliver the project anywhere close to that original estimate.
And that turned a good news story about a needed amenity into one where taxpayers are feeling duped.
