A recent engineer’s report has valued capital assets owned by the township at over $46.5-million.
Last week Brent Bouteiller presented council with the results of its tangible capital assets study, which the province now requires from every municipality.
While he acknowledged there was some trouble obtaining information on the age of certain bridges – and to a lesser extent, roads – Bouteiller estimated the total value of Mapleton assets at the time of acquisition was almost $95-million.
However, accumulated depreciation of over $44-million meant township assets had a value of $51,456,230 as of the beginning of 2008. From that time to the end of last year, the assets depreciated by about $4.9-million, resulting in the ending value of $46,532,128.
Not surprisingly, most of the depreciation occurred under roads – almost $4.3-million last year alone – since they have a relatively short lifespan.
“You’ve got to come up with methods that will extend the life of your assets,” said Bouteiller.
Councillor Mike Downey, for one, disagreed with the identified lifespan of 15 years for surface treated roads.
Bouteiller replied that measure is an average, and there are sure to be examples of roads that don’t last that long as well as some that may last longer. He added the lifespan figure could be changed to 10 years, but that would mean higher annual depreciation.
Finance director Mike Givens agreed, and said the report will constantly be altered and updated.
“This is a working document,” Givens said.
Interestingly, Bouteiller noted land values neither depreciate nor appreciate; they remain at the same value from the time of acquisition – just under $900,000 for Mapleton.
In order to complete the study, Bouteiller had to first develop a policy, including thresholds for items to be included.
For example, vehicles and equipment had to have a unit cost of at least $2,500 to be included. For infrastructure expenditures the figure was $20,000; for municipal drains it was $25,000.
Next, Bouteiller inventoried assets, taking into account the value and date of acquisition, and transferred the data to the Municipal Data Works (MDW) software program.
Then he estimated the replacement cost of assets, conducted asset valuations using MDW (for some roads, he used the pavement condition index from the recent road needs study by R.J. Burnside and Associates) and discussed the methods with auditors.
Notable asset values at the end of 2008 include:
– $790,525 for water wells;
– $814,744 for sewer lines;
– $898,841 for land;
– $915,553 for the sewage treatment plant;
– $964,628 for water lines;
– over $1-million for storm sewer lines;
– $1.6-million for vehicles;
– about $2.6-million for buildings;
– over $5-million for bridges; and
– almost $29-million for roads.
