Summerside exploring options after ditch-infill tenders come in $300K over budget

The City of Summerside, P.E.I. is exploring options for ditch in-fill after tenders for the project came in $300,000 over what the city had expected to pay.

The city wanted to have the work done along a half-kilometre stretch of Westchester Street and along the entirety of MacWilliams Drive, which is less than a half-kilometre. The city was hoping to spend $500,000 on the project, but the tenders came back at a price of $800,000.

Bruce MacDougall, a city councillor and chair of the city's technical services committee, said the project is important to the city.

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"It is a project that we need to keep on top of and it's been a monster," said MacDougall.

'A lot of money for such a short strip'

MacDougall was surprised at how much the project would cost the city because of the relatively short amount of street that needed to be worked on.

"We're not talking long roads, these are streets within the city," said MacDougall.

"It's a lot of money for such a short strip."

While MacDougall doesn't know why the cost is so high, he thinks it could have something to do with the numerous infrastructure projects on the Island.

"It's just the nature of the beast when there's probably going to be a lot of work out there with new wastewater infrastructure programs and there seems to be a lot of work going on, so those tenders, those smaller tenders seem to be higher when that happens," said MacDougall.

The city is exploring other options such as getting city staff to do the work, or reducing the amount of ditch infilling to be done. Regardless, MacDougall said paying the extra money isn't really an option.

"We don't have that in our budget," said MacDougall.

"We budget $500,000, or $504,000 and I believe we should spend that."

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