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Q&A
Addressing funding challenges for fish and meat market projects
0:55:39
ยท
124 sec
Council Member Salamanca seeks assistance from EDC in ensuring accurate cost estimates for fish and meat market projects to avoid funding shortfalls. Andrew Kimball explains the challenges and potential solutions.
- Salamanca's office has allocated funding for fish and meat market projects, but often faces discrepancies between initial quotes and final costs
- Kimball acknowledges the issue and attributes it to factors such as inflation and project delays, particularly during the COVID-19 period
- EDC proposes working closely with market co-ops from the beginning to provide more accurate cost projections
- Kimball appreciates Salamanca's efforts in adding funds and consolidating projects to address these challenges
Rafael Salamanca
0:55:39
Alright.
0:55:40
We'll continue to have conversations on that.
0:55:43
Lastly, I need your help.
0:55:46
We my office has constantly throughout the years, we've allocated funding for the fish market, for example, and the the meat market.
0:55:55
And many times we've had the situation where they may need a new facade and they may quote it at a certain price.
0:56:03
And then the budget comes, the council allocates that funding.
0:56:07
And then after the funding has been allocated and they go through their process on the designs, we find we figure out that it costs way it's a different price tag than what we were quoting.
0:56:19
How can how can you, EDC help the markets, when they're requesting funding from the council to ensure that they're giving us accurate numbers so that we can fund the project in its entirety and we don't have to go back and forth with getting the funding from another budget?
Andrew Kimball
0:56:34
Appreciate the question.
0:56:35
And, you know, I I think we have the team in place and the trust in place with all the coops that if they work with us on the front end, we can properly project what the cost will be realistically because as you know even even in the best of times from the moment you allocate capital dollars to the day it gets spent can be a number of years and so you have inflation you know, and in some cases you have insane inflation like we've had the last few years.
0:57:05
So that that is one reason.
0:57:06
Another reason that this was a particular problem that I inherited and been trying to work on with you and you've rightly been frustrated with at times is that during the COVID period all of our capital funding was frozen.
0:57:20
So that was like another stretch of time.
0:57:22
So when you came out of that you were even farther behind between the point the money was allocated and the time was going to get spent.
0:57:29
So I appreciated that you have added dollars.
0:57:31
I appreciated that you've worked with us to consolidate some of those projects so we get projects going again, and I think we're making real headway.
Rafael Salamanca
0:57:41
Alright.
0:57:41
Thank you.
0:57:42
Thank you, madam chair.