Mountain View County council has OK'd talks between the Town of Sundre and the municipality regarding utility servicing costs on the east side of Sundre and the adjacent county lands.
The approval of negotiations came during the recent regularly scheduled council meeting.
County council had previously directed that there be no negotiations with the Town of Sundre regarding east side servicing until a request was received in writing from the Town of Sundre.
In a letter received by council on June 21, Sundre Mayor Terry Leslie said the town has requested a contribution of $401,324.49 from Mountain View County for the over-sizing of services to the east side of Sundre.
“The contribution provided on behalf of Mountain View County is based on the cost of the over-sizing as per the memorandum of agreement, whereby the over-sizing cost is 13.8 per cent of the project costs,” Leslie said.
Under the MOA, developers within the county wishing to connect (to the servicing) will pay any costs incurred by the town, including all engineering review and legal review costs.
In his letter Leslie also outlined areas where future negotiations need to take place:
• Providing water services to any land above an elevation of about 1,095 metres, which would include all county land and some Sundre land, will require the construction and operation of a future east water pumping reservoir.
“The cost of this future project has not been included in the above cost sharing negotiations, and will need to be negotiated in the future,” he said.
• There has not been any cost sharing applied to the east side wastewater lift station. Phase 1 of this project was constructed in 2012 and has capacity for approximately 2,000 people. Due to special complexities of this project, special negotiations for cost sharing should be held for this project in isolation from other cost sharing negotiations.
• A future agreement could include the town owning and operating all the water and wastewater mains installed into MVC right of ways. “This would ensure that they were installed and maintained to town standards. However, this would also increase the scope of the town's utility department,” he said.
Negotiations between the county and the town are expected to get underway right away.
