The extra infrastructure money the provincial and federal governments are making available to municipalities may have a slight downside for smaller, rural communities.
Georgian Bluffs CAO Bill White wants to ensure that when there’s large sums of extra money floating around, contractors continue to provide competitive tenders.
White says being a smaller community, there are less construction companies to choose from to hire for road and sewer works.
He wants to ensure the bids the township gets from these companies aren’t inflated just because the big bucks are out there for the big projects.
White says they’re lucky to have a local contractor who does most of their work, but he hopes the township is spending its money as efficiently as possible.
The issue came up during council’s discussion on the tender for work to regrade and resurface Big Bay road.
Council accepted a tender from Harold Sutherland Construction to complete the regrading for about 529 thousand dollars, which White says is substantially higher than the estimate.
