Whitby pays a little more to offer a little more

It would be easy to criticize the Town of Whitby for hundreds of thousands of dollars in extra expenditures for renovations at Iroquois Park Sports Centre. Too easy, in fact.

The funds, totalling some $200,000, were requested by staff to cover unforeseen expenses related to the renovation, despite a sizable contingency fund created to deal with such circumstances.

And, as Whitby commissioner of community and marketing services Peter Lebel noted, it’s not entirely uncommon for the scope of large projects to change as work progresses. In the case of the Iroquois Park structure, the building is 40 years old and some of the information related to mechanical and electrical components was unavailable. As well, the tight deadlines required for the Town to access provincial and federal funds for shovel-ready infrastructure projects required fleetness of foot in ensuring that deadlines were met.

http://www.durhamregion.com/opinion/editorial/article/1312054