Warden Joanne Ross-Zuj announced at county council on March 25 that the new archives in Aboyne will open on June 25, and just before that the Mount Forest library will be officially reopened on April 30.
As well, the model suites for the social housing units being built on Gordon Street in Fergus are already open for viewing.
But councillor Carl Hall posed an awkward question when those issues were under consideration for approval by county council.
Hall said he found it “curious” that there had been so many changes to the plans during construction.
There were six changes made over the past month to the archives building, bringing the total number of changes over the course of the project to 36, at a cost of $104,168.
There were seven changes to the plans for the Mount Forest library renovations, bringing that total to 31, with a total cost of $76,717 (all figures rounded off to the nearest dollar.
With the social housing project, there were 21 changes, bringing the total since the start of construction to 46 – at a cost of $132,223.
“There’s been an awful lot of changes in the work orders,” Hall said.
“It adds up to a lot of money. I’m not really alarmed, but we’ve added over $100,000 to one project. Are we missing something?’
County Treasurer Craig Dyer said in the case of the library and archives, the township is withing the range of costs that it had planned for, and he noted there is a contingency fund if there are cost overruns of the estimates.
Councillor Bob Wilson also had reservations.
“I was a little concerned,” he said. “The change work orders reflect on the architect and the engineer working on these jobs,” he said.
Wilson added that he finds the costs of $76,000 for the Mount Forest library to be more serious than those for the archives changes at over $100,000, because the archives project is far more complex and costly.
“There were noteworthy changes at the Mount Forest library,” he said.
Gord Tosh, the chairman of the social services committee , said Wilson is “exactly right.”
Tosh said, “Sometimes people working there [the social housing project] got ahead of themselves – the sort of thing that happens that cause small changes.”
Council then approved the reports.
