City holds off on Baywood Road Decision

The City of Cold Lake has deferred making a decision on funding a portion of Baywood Road until later in the year. Mayor of Cold Lake, Craig Copeland explains that at this time the City Council is not sure they can honour a request for funding from the Municipal District of Bonnyville.

According to the February 27th Agenda Package, “The City received a letter from MD of Bonnyville dated February 13, 2018 confirming that Baywood project is scheduled for completion in summer of 2018 with an estimated cost of $1.2 Million. The total project is estimated to cost $3.7 Million. The MD eludes to the City supporting this project.”

Mayor Copeland says that with less money coming in from ID-349 (Cold Lake Air Weapons Range), Council did not want to make a decision as to whether or not they can assist in funding the project; and if they could how much would be possible. “We’ve delayed that [decision] until we see where we are in May and if there’s any new money coming in. With the uncertainty of the air weapons range, we’re not going to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’, right now.”

“We’re pretty disappointed in the Province, for making such a significant change in our funding,” the mayor says the drastic change in funding has affected the City’s budget greatly and its ability to support projects, such as Baywood Road. “We still support the Baywood Road, it’s going to be a matter of how we’re going to honour our commitment to that road on a motion we made back in 2015,” had the City known their funding would be cut, they likely would not have made the same motion, says Copeland. According to the Agenda Package, “at the regular Council Meeting on  January 13, 2015  Council made a motion to  allocated $1M for the reconstruction of Baywood Road.  Approximately 22% of the project was completed in 2015 and the City released funding of $167,200 to coincide with the portion that was completed.”

Background is given in the Agenda Package, “In 2016 City released $167,200 for the portion of the road that was constructed in 2015 and notified MD that any further contribution requests would have to be brought to Cold Lake council for their consideration. Similar request was made for 2017 construction but as City of Cold Lake was not aware of this project, 2017 Budget did not include funding for this project. A letter was sent stating that such project is a good candidate for conversation to begin the process of developing Inter-Municipal Collaboration Framework (ICF).”

“We would love to help, we’re just trying to figure out how we’re going to do it,” Mayor Copeland is sure the M.D. can be sympathetic to the City’s situation, “everybody’s got to understand when you lose $10 million from $25 million, it’s now a tougher priority list to look at.” Baywood Road is a popular road that extends out of the City east from 50th street. The road is used for several M.D. subdivisions, as well as to access Kinosoo Ridge Snow Resort.