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The Oct. 16 ratepayers’ vote: What’s it about?

Iqaluit city hall, pool dying of old age

JIM BELL

Elisapee Sheutiapik, Iqaluit’s mayor, John Hussey, the city’s director of finance, and Clinton Mauthe, the city’s new CAO, explain the city’s ratepayer referendum questions to a meeting of Namminiq Angirraliit Iqalunni Association, the Iqaluit homeowners’ association, in Iqaluit last week. (PHOTO BY JIM BELL)

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That’s why, on Oct. 16, the city will ask ratepayers to vote yes or no to two referendum questions that seek permission to borrow up to $18 million within the next five years.

The first seeks permission to borrow up to $6 million for a new city hall; the second seeks permission to borrow up to $12 million for a multi-purpose recreational facility and swimming pool.

“It’s not a safe place for the staff,” John Hussey, the city’s director of finance, said of the 30-year-old building that houses the city’s main administrative office and city council chambers.

Health officials warned the city this past summer that poor air quality in the city’s main office creates an occupational health hazard, Hussey said.

That’s because exhaust from vehicles in the fire hall and the Zamboni machine inside the rink leaks into the area that houses the city offices, spewing carbon monoxide into the air.

“We may be mandated to leave the city office,” Hussey said.

That’s not all.

This past summer, Elisapee Sheutiapik, the mayor, saw first-hand why the current city hall is now obsolete.

That was when the deputy minister of Infrastructure Canada, who uses a wheelchair, visited Iqaluit to talk about municipal issues, but could not gain access to Sheutiapik’s office.

That’s because Iqaluit’s city offices lie at the end of a long narrow set of staircases, posing a virtually insurmountable barrier for handicapped people, including those in wheelchairs.

This also makes it extremely difficult for handicapped people and the elderly in Iqaluit to attend city council meetings.

As well, the city has now outgrown its current home. Located in a cramped upstairs corner of a much larger building, the city office is now too small to house all administrative staff, forcing the city to lease office space, at a cost of about $50,000 a year, in the building that houses Iqaluit’s Subway franchise.

If city workers are ordered to vacate their current offices, the city would face two expensive options:

• lease new office and meeting space, at an estimated cost of $600,000 a year;
• build a new city hall, at a cost of about $4.5 million for construction, and $1.5 million for equipment and furnishings, totalling about $6 million.

That’s the maximum amount the city seeks permission to borrow in the first of their two referendum questions.

Hussey said it’s not likely the city will need to borrow that entire amount.

That’s because city officials believe they can get most of the money they need from a federal government program called “MRIF,” short for “Municipal Rural Infrastructure Fund.”

Under the MRIF scheme, Ottawa agrees to pay for one-third of a municipal project if the territorial and municipal government also agree to pay one-third each.

Coun. Glenn Williams, who is running for re-election, pointed out that in the last ratepayers’ referendum, ratepayers gave the city permission to borrow up to $4 million to spend within the recent five-year capital building plan they developed with the Government of Nunavut.

But it turned out that the city didn’t need the entire $4 million and they ended up borrowing only $2.5 million.

Hussey said if it’s inevitable that the city will one day be forced to spend $600,000 a year on new office space, “we may as well pay a mortgage to ourselves than help pay someone else’s mortgage.”

He said that in late 2004, city council agreed to create a special building fund reserve. By Dec. 31, city expects that fund will have grown to $225,000, and that it will continue to grow at a rate of about $100,000 a year.

As for the city’s need for a new multi-purpose recreation centre and swimming, that’s driven by the uncertain status of the 30-year-old Astro Hill swimming pool.

Hussey said the city was able to renew its lease this year with the pool’s owner, Nunastar Properties, only after a difficult set of negotiations.

And he said there’s no guarantee that the lease, due to expire in 2009, will be renewed. That’s because Nunastar will likely have other plans for that space.

And the aging pool is costing the city ever-increasing amounts of money: $200,000 in lease payments by 2009, and $120,000 a year in maintenance costs.

As for the impact of the proposed borrowing on ratepayer tax bills, Hussey said that if the city were to borrow all $18 million, the cost of repaying the loans would add about 2 mills to each ratepayer tax bill - about $500 a year.

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