Hi I’m Lisa, the Mayor of Mytown. The role of my Council is to ensure that residents
are provided with services that are essential to our quality of life, like clean drinking
water and sanitation, transportation, parks and recreation services.
Our community’s infrastructure assets are critical to deliver these services.
Today, like in many Canadian communities, one third of Mytown’s assets are in poor
condition – in part because most of our assets were built in the 50s and 60s and are
reaching the end of their useful life.
At the same time, our community has grown, and so has the demand for new and improved
services. We’ve also had to spend money to upgrade
our assets to comply with new environmental and safety standards.
We made investment decisions based on our ability to finance the upfront development
costs. However, the bigger, ongoing costs to operate,
maintain and eventually replace these assets were not fully built into the analysis.
Plus, our assets are vulnerable. Climate change has resulted in impacts from more severe storms,
flooding, and other unexpected events. Our assets were not designed with these impacts
in mind. For example, one of our roads was washed out
during last spring’s flood, and we had to reprioritize and redirect money in response.
Now we’re caught in a cycle where: new infrastructure is needed to service growth
that has been sprawling beyond the core;
residents count on us to deliver exceptional services;
we need to catch up on overdue maintenance of existing assets;
and to finance the replacement of our old ones.
We strive to keep taxes and fees low, however, the revenue we collect to manage all this
isn’t keeping pace with it all.
So, my council has been faced with some tough decisions.
Do we adjust tax rates? Do we delay maintenance and repairs even longer
and risk the consequences? How much should we place annually in a reserve
fund? Do we reduce the level of services?
Do we delay new projects? So what are we doing?
We’re engaging in asset management planning to be more strategic about how we manage our
assets and spending. We’re reviewing our assets across all departments
in a holistic and integrated way. We’re evaluating the full life cycle costs
of different capital assets and land-use decisions to ensure we we´re choosing the best long-term
option for the community.
To become more resilient to a changing climate, we’re developing a climate adaptation plan
and starting to identify how we can become less dependent on fossil fuels.
We now recognize the value of the services our natural assets provide, like managing
stormwater and improving water quality. We’re also speaking to residents about the
cost of service delivery and their needs and priorities.
All this work is helping us to coordinate our infrastructure work, and set priorities.
Now we have an ongoing process in place that is proactive , and allows us now to make better-informed
and strategic decisions.
We’re now much better placed to support Mytown’s economy and our residents’ quality
of life sustainably. The health of our assets is central to achieving
these goals.
Do some of Mytown’s challenges seem familiar to you?