Price of proposed Belleville fire hall skyrockets

By Marc Venema

BELLEVILLE, Ont. (25/06/2012) Belleville Mayor Neil Ellis discusses the funding for the cities proposed fire hall during Monday night's council meeting. The issue will be revisited next month. Photo by Marc Venema.

Members of Belleville city council are taking some of the blame after the city’s proposed new fire hall skyrocketed in price.

“What unfortunately happened with the fire hall was we didn’t have an expert give us a detailed cost,” Councilor Egerton Boyce said in an interview following Monday night’s council meeting. “It was strictly a guesstimate.

“Council can take blame for that guesstimate.”

The hall was originally given a price tag of approximately $5.5 million back in 2006.

Belleville Fire Chief Rheaumé Chaput said another $2 million is now needed to build the hall slated to go up on Lahr Drive. Council rejected the extra money and will instead revisit the issue next month.

The rise in price was dropped on the laps of city council just last week.

“I can certainly appreciate council’s position,” Chaput said. “They weren’t aware before that meeting that there was an issue in regards to costing, so there was a surprise for them.”

While some councilors argued about the cost being too much, Mayor Neil Ellis wanted to know if the cost was to little.

To lower the price, the size of the hall has been reduced from 25,000 square feet to 19,500 square feet.

“The chief had noted that he’d already downsized it by 20 per cent,” Ellis said. “And my question was ‘what have you taken out?”

“We have to build it for today and for down the road, so when you look at a building that was estimated to be around 25,000 square feet and it’s now cut down to below 20,000 square feet, what did we lose? Are we all of a sudden making it that we have to build something later?”

Chaput answered, saying the hall will be fully equipped and fully functional, adding the building will be built with future additions in mind.

“It allows for expansion down the road, should we require it,” Chaput said. “It’s already structured to be able to add on to the building.”

Councilor Jack Miller suggested handing out half of the needed money. Ellis then decided it’d be best to do some research and revisit the issue at a future council meeting.

“We will have to see what council decides, ultimately they determine what needs to happen, as far as funding,” Chaput said. “It could easily go over or under that estimated amount, hopefully it’s certainly going to be under, we are going to try our hardest to make it under the budget amount.”