It is a difficult situation and Humboldt isn't the only community facing it.
People gathered at the City's Open House about infrastructure on February 26 all heard the same thing - it's a challenge everywhere.
"This, of course, is an important topic and an important challenge for this city," said Mayor Malcolm Eaton. "It is actually an important challenge for communities right across this country and many other places in the province."
The purpose of the evening was to provide citizens a better understanding of the challenges the City is facing when it comes to infrastructure and what they plan for the future.
Representatives from the City, including Eaton, Steve Brown, Director of Finance and Joe Doxey, Director of Planning and Engineering, along with representatives from Vemax Management, an asset management consulting firm, were on hand to explain the City's situation.
"Today, we are talking about the two most important and very basic parts of our infrastructure system in the community - water and sewer system as well as our roadways and transportation system," said Eaton.
Although their focus was on the water and sewer and transportation systems, Eaton reminded citizens there are many other types of infrastructure, like schools, recreational facilities and parks, that are also important.
In her presentation, Nicole Allen of Vemax explained the company was brought in to help give the City a proper perspective of its infrastructure.
"The purpose of the project is to report more effective management of the City of Humboldt roads," said Allen. "We really wanted to provide a basis so going forward we can have an asset management plan so we can do what we have to do, what it costs and how to move forward."
Infrastructure is an important part of any city, Allen explained. It plays a huge role in everyone's day-to-day life, which is why it is important to keep it in the best shape possible.
"As a growing community, we are working hard to balance the needs of the old infrastructure along with doing what we need to address new infrastructure," said Eaton. "Of course, it is always about the money."
Eaton explained this year, as council is planning the budget, they hope to put another $1 million towards road infrastructure - about the same as the 2012 budget.
"We have been spending a significant amount of money and it is an expensive process," said Eaton. "That is certainly one of the challenges this council is facing."
Although the City has earmarked a lot of money for the road infrastructure, Allen explained it may not be enough to sustain the roads at a high level of service.
"Just looking at the surface and the structure of the roads, it would cost $2.9 million annually" to keep the roads in good condition, Allen said. "The annual budget, as Mayor Eaton had indicated was about $1 million a year. It looks like a shortfall of $1.9 million a year."
Humboldt is not the only city facing this problem.
"I don't know if I have ever worked with a community that didn't have a shortfall," said Allen. "This is something that everyone is struggling with right now. The level of service and what are costs to provide that isn't matching with the funds that are available."
She explained that is why what Vemax is doing with the City to create an asset management plan is important.
"The implications of not covering those full costs, of not having the money to do the things you need to do, there is risk associated with it," said Allen.
Some of the risks are decreased level of service, the overall quality of service going down, increased chance of failure, increased chance of financial shock and decreased cost management.
In order to explain how asset management works, she asked everyone to think about the costs associated with owning a vehicle.
"We all own vehicles, we all own houses and we try to manage those things in the most cost-effective way because we want to not spend more money than we have to," said Allen. "It is the same thing with all of our infrastructure. There is significant investment. It is not cheap to maintain infrastructure."
There is the initial capital cost of buying a car up front, but throughout the time a person owns a vehicle, they have to account for operating costs, like fuel, insurance and licence, maintenance costs like oil changes, renewal costs like tires and windshields, and disposal costs once the vehicle has reached the end of its useful life.
Allen said they apply the same principle to road infrastructure.
A road can last up to 30 years before it needs to be replaced, she explained.
If you wait 15 years to do renewals, the condition of the road will have deteriorated to poor condition, which can cost about $40,000 to fix, which will be a total of $80,000 over 30 years. If instead, you decide to renew the roads every 10 years, it will only cost a total of $40,000 over the 30 years.
"If you compare those two methods, you reduce the cost by 50 per cent," said Allen. "It is a no brainer. It costs less and the roads are in better condition."
That is just one road. Allen said if Humboldt has to replace all the infrastructure, for water, sewer and transportation, at one time it would cost about $106 million for water and sewer and $54 million for roads.
"That is a lot of money that is invested into this infrastructure right now," said Allen.
In order to reduce the cost of renewing infrastructure, communities need to do the right thing at the right time.
"Studies show you can actually reduce the costs of providing infrastructure by 20-50 per cent if you manage proactively," said Allen.
Although costs can be reduced by lowering the level of services, that is not the right way to do things.
"There seems to be a general increase in the expectations of the level of service," said Allen. "What this means is as citizens, our expectations of the infrastructure continue to rise."
Since assets seem to last a defined amount of time, cities can generally plan when to replace them.
"If you know how old it is, you can make a rough guess when it is going to have to be replaced and how much it is going to cost," said Allen. "There is about $18 million of road structure that is expected to be replaced in the next 10 to 20 years and about $10 million of surface that is expected to come to the end of what it would last."
She explained a study of the roads determined 32 per cent were in good condition, 22 per cent fair and 44 per cent were in poor condition.
"When we looked at the road conditions, some of the things we looked specifically for are pavement failures, poor drainage, asphalt oxidation, fatigue cracking (looks like alligator scales) and failure," said Allen.
The City is working on a long-term infrastructure plan moving forward.
"There is a significant amount of water and sewer work planned for the next term," said Allen. "Since it is underground work, you will have to do work on the overlaying roads once you do the water and sewer work."
Since there is so much work to be done on the water and sewer, it is driving the majority of the road work, she explained.
"It is not necessarily the roads you would choose to do or the most cost-effective way to renew the roads you have because it is really being driven by the most optimal way to do the water and sewer," said Allen. "There is nothing you can do about that."
Over the next 10 years, the City anticipates there are 13 kilometres of water and sewer to be replaced, which means there are about 13 kilometres of roadway to be replaced, which will cost about $15 million.
"That is not the only work," said Allen. "There are other road work projects that have been identified which will cost about $2.36 million."
Although the City would be doing renewals, they would still have to maintain the other roads with things like slurry seals and patching.
"All of those things still cost (about) an additional $500,000 a year," said Allen. "In total, the estimated 10-year road expenditure is $22 million or $2.2 million per year."
Since there is not enough money for infrastructure, the City is looking for ways to fund these projects, since they don't want to tax citizens beyond what they can pay.
Brown explained they are trying to create efficiencies in purchasing and planning where they can.
"We have been very diligent in making sure we get the best bang for the buck," said Brown.
The City is also making five-year plans for infrastructure.
"Rather than be reactive and wait for the water pipe to burst, wait for things to happen, with the five-year plan council is being aggressive and proactive and going after the solutions as opposed to waiting for things to happen," said Brown. "By being proactive and aggressive in going after the problem, the average savings could be anywhere between three to five per cent."
Another thing the City is working on is to get the provincial and federal governments on board with a long-term infrastructure plan for communities.
"Every dollar that is collected in taxes, eight cents goes to the municipalities and the other 92 cents goes to our provincial and federal governments," said Eaton. "It is no surprise we have been very supportive along with many other municipalities in trying to develop a long-term infrastructure program that supports the day-to-day operations.
They are looking towards the future and hope they are on the right track.
"We are working on this very hard," said Eaton. "Part of this is planning - not only what we do but how we will pay for it. I think that is where we have made some progress in the last couple years is in the planning component and the asset management plan we have been working on has been an important (piece to) develop plans for how to proceed in the future."
