The City of Sarnia continues work to include all of its municipal assets into its asset management plan.
General Manager of Engineering and Operations David Jackson said the city owns over $2.5 billion worth of assets, over 100,000 of which are unique, and everything from a bench to a large facility must be included by 2024.
"It's really answering these basic questions for every asset we own," said Jackson. "What is it, where is it, what's it worth, what condition is it in and what work do we need to do to rehabilitate it or replace it at the end of its life cycle."
Jackson said the province passed legislation requiring an asset management plan and a number of other milestones have already been achieved.
"The first one was our policy, which council adopted in 2019. Last summer we had to complete the infrastructure plan for the core assets and right now we're working towards the next milestone which is by next summer we need to have all the municipal assets in that plan," he said.
Jackson said public input will be sought in 2025, to determine the desired levels of service for the assets and a financial strategy to achieve the recommendations.
He said the estimated replacement value of Sarnia's core assets; water, sewers, roads and bridges is $2.4 billion and the city's estimated infrastructure backlog is now $400 million dollars.
"Every single municipality is struggling with these same challenges. Every municipality has a large infrastructure backlog." said Jackson.
He attributes it to a boom in construction after World War II when most water, sewer and roads were built.
"At the time there were no maintenance needs required for those for the first, 20, 30, 40 years and so we didn't set taxes or rates appropriately to maintain them. We're now getting to the point where we're starting to see the end of life of many of those assets and that wave of infrastructure is coming at us over the next decades," Jackson said.
The update was given during a special corporate priorities and strategic planning meeting Monday morning.
