Capital works aplenty on Holyrood’s books
By Craig Westcott
When it came time to pay the bills at Holyrood council’s first meeting of its new term, Mayor Laura Crawley took pains to explain that the massive amount to be paid from the Town’s capital account, some $921,678, was not typical.
“I just want to point out that this is a capital account,” said Crawley. “The number looks quite large, but the capital account means grants and capital works projects that we have – some sewer projects, water projects, road projects – that’s what falls under these (categories), so the amounts are quite large. That won’t happen every month.”
An earlier motion to pay $240,015 from the general account was to cover the day-to-day expenses of running the Town Hall since the previous council meeting in September.
A third motion, to pay $143,447 from the Town’s gas tax account, which is a pot of money provided by the federal government but administered by the province, also drew an explanation from the mayor.
“This is for our lights on the (softball) field,” said Crawley. “We’re really excited to have the lights on and if you notice, when you’re driving along the Northside Road, or North Arm, they light up the whole place. I don’t think I knew it was positioned where it was coming across North Arm until I saw the lights”
Meanwhile, council can expect some more big bills to roll through its ledgers over the coming year as the Town still has a lot of major public works booked for construction.
In his opening remarks for the first meeting of the term, infrastructure and public works committee chairman Steve Winsor apprised his colleagues of some of it.
“We’ve got a lot of work to do,” said Windsor. “It takes time to do projects, and it takes time to do it right… We have a water system expansion to come, there are sewer treatment upgrades to come, there is a water supply expansion through a water study and test wells that are being drilled, we have a community centre study, concept design and public consultation coming, we have new cell phone towers coming by Bell Canada, there is the festival grounds project and boardwalk continuation – so many projects. There are a lot of great things coming for this town and we need to get down to it and get moving and I look forward to that.”