They need more money.
The City of Humboldt is looking at increasing their debt limit from $7 million to $10 million.
"We had to take our debt limit up because the City is possibly undertaking that Superpipe project," explained director of finance Steve Brown. "Basically we have to move our debt limit up because that project can range anywhere from $2-3 million alone."
The Superpipe will be a large pipe that will be able to handle large loads of water after heavy rainfall or in the spring when the snow melts. It will help protect houses from flooding in the area behind the Dairy Queen, where there have been flood problems in the past.
The project has been sent to tender and the City is waiting to get the tenders back.
"It is just a matter of whether we are going to do one, two or three pipes in the ground, are we going to spread it out over three years or do it all in one shot," said Brown.
All of those decisions will depend on the outcome of the tenders, he said.
They do have money assigned to pay back the debt in the form of a storm levy, so he believes getting the debt limit increased will not be a problem.
"It is going to be applied to repaying that debt taken out because that is a flood mitigation project and that is what the levy, from what I understand, was to do flood mitigation work in the city," said Brown.
He also mentioned that there are always questions when a municipality asks to increase their debt limit.
"Anytime you keep increasing debt, you are going to have to justify how you are going to pay that money back," said Brown. "I don't see a big issue since we do have money ear-marked to pay it."
