The city’s annual infrastructure-spending gap has been newly estimated at $62 million per year.
Although this figure is significantly shy of the $130-million estimate the city calculated in 2023, communications staff clarified that the new figure represents “improved asset condition data, more accurate lifecycle costing and was evaluated against projected levels of funding that included council-approved investments from the 2024–2027 capital budget.”
The earlier estimate, they noted, “was based on broader assumptions.”
On this front, then-mayor Brian Bigger referred to the $100-million annual infrastructure spending gap calculated in 2021 as “a very, very rough estimate,” which would be continually revised.
The newly calculated infrastructure spending gap includes a 10-year spending gap of $486 million for assets funded from property taxes and a $134-million gap funded from water and wastewater rates.
During their latest finance and administration committee meeting on June 17, city council members mapped an 18-year path toward filling the $13.4-million annual water/wastewater infrastructure spending gap.
The plan would require a water/wastewater rate increase of 4.8 per cent this year, followed by annual increases before hitting six per cent by 2031, with subsequent increases remaining at six per cent. If followed for the full 18 years, the funding boost would fill the water/wastewater fee-fuelled portion of the municipal spending gap.
As for the $48.6-million annual balance?
That’ll be up to future decisions of city council.
“As a large city, we built a lot of things and at some point we probably need to challenge ourselves,” Ward 5 Coun. Mike Parent said during a recent meeting at which city council members were updated on the city’s Enterprise Asset Management Plan.
“Can we divest of an asset or consolidate rather than maintain or continue to replace.”
Linear Infrastructure Services director Joe Rocca said service-level changes could help lower the annual spending gap.
“There may be a desire to have … a higher level of service for some assets and a lower level of service for other assets.”
As it stands, the city’s current Enterprise Asset Management Plan, which calculates the $62-million infrastructure spending gap, reflects what it would take to maintain existing asset conditions and current service levels — basically, status-quo infrastructure, overall.
This is the high-level explanation provided by city staff, but digging a bit deeper reveals that changes to service levels have been factored into the latest infrastructure spending gap estimate.
Earlier this year, the city estimated that Greater Sudbury’s degrading roads were underfunded by $77.8-million annually, with approximately $110 needed to be spent on asphalt rehabilitation each year in order to maintain them in their current overall condition (only $32.2 million has been expended annually in recent years, on average).
In their latest report, the city estimates that only $73.1 million needs to be spent annually on asphalt rehabilitation, which falls well short of the prior estimate of $110 million.
Under this new estimate, and if afforded the full $73.1 million annually, the city would allow arterial roads to improve in pavement condition index from 65 to 68, while collector roads would drop from 51 to 48 and local roads would drop from 52 to 49.
Where the $110-million annual estimate would have maintained the city’s overall average pavement condition index, the new approach with the lower estimate evaluates each road class separately.
These differences in asphalt quality reflect “focusing resources on keeping arterial roads in good condition while allowing collector and local roads to remain in fair condition,” city communications staff explained.
As Rocca has told city council members on a number of occasions, it’s more cost-effective to keep infrastructure in good condition with regular maintenance than it is to improve the condition of infrastructure after it has degraded into fair or poor condition.
“Early investments in our infrastructure will help us avoid much more expensive treatments later on,” Rocca said recently.
Per city communications staff, “The resulting change in pavement condition index for each road class is minimal” and is “not expected to be noticeable to the average driver, as the overall condition of the network remains consistent and serviceable.”
The city’s Enterprise Asset Management Plan update with the new $62-million annual infrastructure spending gap is the latest in a multi-year effort to map out what would be required to bring an end to the ongoing degradation of municipal infrastructure.
It’s part of a provincial requirement, with the city’s latest plan fulfilling a deadline to submit such a document to the province by July 1.
“There are many councils receiving similar presentations as everyone is looking to meet this deadline, and the headlines are consistently millions if not billions of dollars of infrastructure gap,” city CAO Shari Lichterman said during a recent meeting, at which she sought to establish that Greater Sudbury “is not alone in terms of the infrastructure spending gap.”
By flagging which areas of municipal operations need investments, she said the newly updated Enterprise Asset Management Plan “prepares municipalities for funding opportunities, and also presents an argument for growth.”
Tyler Clarke covers city hall and political affairs for Sudbury.com.