City of Whitehorse aims to fix roads, upgrade facilities next year

The City of Whitehorse is taking a breather in next year's capital spending budget, to focus on "infrastructure renewal."

"We're replacing our fleet, we're constructing our streets, we're surfacing our roads, we're upgrading our facilities," said Valerie Braga, the city's director of corporate services.

"We're not at this time looking necessarily to take on new things, we're looking to make sure we're maintaining the services to our citizens."

The $8.91-million capital budget for 2019 was tabled Tuesday during a council meeting at city hall. That's far lower than the city's $82-million dollar capital budget for 2018, which included money for construction of city buildings and the purchase of equipment.

Braga noted, however, that the provisional budget presented this week will grow over time. That's partly because some unspent funding approved last year will be carried over into 2019.

City staff say, for example, that the city's new operations building alone made up more than $50 million of 2018's big capital budget. But it won't be completed until later next year.

The city is also expecting to get millions of dollars from the federal and territorial governments in the coming months for projects that haven't been approved yet.

One of the highest profile projects next year will be construction of a new downtown fire hall, on the old Motorways truck yard on Second Avenue.

Re-naming project proposed as part of reconciliation

The city is also proposing to re-name some streets, parks and landmarks as part of reconciliation with Indigenous peoples.

Mike Gau, the city's director of development services, said $10,000 will be budgeted to begin the project in 2019 with another $40,000 set aside for 2020.

Gau said the process of identifying potential features to be re-named would depend largely on Indigenous citizens. 

The city would be, "working with the First Nations closely and hearing from the elders and getting the stories told by the First Nations, in order to bring a plan and a study together to city council," he said.

There is a public input session on Nov. 26 for the budget, said Mayor Dan Curtis. He said the budget will likely be adopted at a council meeting on Dec. 10.

The city's operations and maintenance budget, which would include any tax or fee increases, is expected to be tabled before Christmas, said Braga.