“We don’t want to delay any major project like this,” said Luc Bédard, chief administrator for Alfred-Plantagenet Township, to council during its May 5 teleconference session.

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Réparations confirmées pour la tour d’eau de Wendover

Last year’s inspection of the structure indicated that about 15 per cent of the exterior facing needed refinishing and about 10 per cent of the interior furnishings and fixings needed repair.

The problem was that one of the two original companies responsible for improvement work done on the water tower had declared bankruptcy. The other company agreed to do the repair work at a reduced cost of $90,000.

A more recent re-inspection of the tower by the Ontario Clean Water Agency (OCWA) revealed that about one-quarter of the structure’s exterior needs redoing and that “major repairs are needed” inside.

There is $60,000 in the township’s Wendover water reserve fund. Administration presented council with three options for the situation.

The first option was to do the interior repair work first at a projected cost of $50,000 and leave the exterior refinishing for later. Second option was to do both interior and exterior work at the $90,000 price offered by the constractor.

The third option was to postpone the repair work first and see if the township could get a lower price through an open bid process for the job. Council voted for option two based on Bédard’s comment about the urgency of the situation.