With municipalities around Ontario presenting their 2024 asset management plans for council adoption prior to the provincially mandated July deadlines, Tay Township received its plan at a recent meeting of council.
In 2015, Ontario Regulation 588/17 was introduced, which mandated each municipality review and update its asset management plan every five years to ensure infrastructure health and growth.
Financial analyst Emma Whiteside told members of Tay council the replacement costs of assets and annual financial requirements were consistent with what was presented in the 2022 asset management plan.
The overall replacement cost of Tay-owned assets would total $300 million, if they were replaced in today’s dollars.
Assets were assessed either using condition data for 38 per cent of assets or by age for approximate condition assessment where condition data was unavailable in the remaining 62 per cent.
According to the report, 87 per cent of all township assets were listed in fair or better condition.
Asset categories and conditions included land improvements (very good — 84 per cent), water network (very good — 83 per cent), vehicles (good — 79 per cent), road network (good — 76 per cent), equipment (good — 74 per cent), bridges and culverts (good — 69 per cent), stormwater network (good — 67 per cent), wastewater network (very good — 60 per cent), and buildings (fair — 55 per cent).
While the report advised a target reinvestment rate of 2.8 per cent be allocated (at about $8.3 million annually), it noted the actual annual spending on infrastructure totalled approximately $5 million for a 1.7 per cent reinvestment rate; the result was a $3.3-million annual capital infrastructure deficit as listed in 2023.
To eliminate the annual infrastructure deficit, the recommended time frame was 20 years. An annual tax/rate change based on the 20-year plan was pitched as a .8 per cent increase for rate-funded water, a 1.3 per cent increase for rate-funded sanitary, and a .9 per cent increase for tax-funded assets.
The asset management plan also included asset retirement obligations, defined as the expected future costs associated with the retirement of tangible capital assets, which had been approved at the previous meeting of the committee of the whole.
By meeting the July 2024 deadline, the municipality had identified the current levels of service and the costs to maintain those levels of service for all municipal infrastructure assets. By July 2025, municipalities will be required to have another asset management plan that lists the state of infrastructure for all assets, their proposed levels of service and related lifecycle costs, growth impacts, and a financial strategy.
The report was received with minimal comment from Tay council members, with Deputy Mayor Barry Norris expressing praise for the work Whiteside had accomplished.
“Great work on this,” he said. “I mean, I only spent two hours reading this on a nice, rainy Saturday. Well done. Thank you.”
The 2024 asset management plan update report can be found in the agenda page on the Tay Township website.
Tay council meets for committee of the whole meetings every second Wednesday of the month, and regular council meetings every fourth Wednesday of the month. Archives and livestreams of council meetings are available through the Tay Township YouTube channel.
