The RM of Laird is on track to develop a long-term plan that ensures it can maintain and replace infrastructure as needed without straining its financial resources.
A $50,000 grant to the RM provided by the federal government and administered through the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) Municipal Asset Management Program (MAMP) was announced in late February. The grant was approved in November, 2020.
The grant is designed to provide “asset management guidance for goals, objectives and facilitation,” according to the FCM. It is one of 30 new MAMP grant projects worth $1.39 million already underway in communities across Saskatchewan.
The FCM said the MAMP program aims to strengthen local infrastructure planning and decision-making by increasing local asset management capacity through investments in activities such as asset management training, technology and software enhancements and information sharing,
FCM President Garth Frizzell said municipalities own nearly 60 per cent of the public infrastructure that supports Canada’s economy and quality of life.
“With strengthened asset management practices, they are making infrastructure investment decisions based on sound and reliable data,” said Frizzell.
The RM of Laird has contracted with Northbound Planning, a Saskatchewan-based firm that specializes in assisting municipalities, First Nations, and regional authorities establish strong planning policies and regulations for future development.
Northbound Planning Director of Asset Management Jamie Hallett said the RM of Laird has a solid foundation on which to build its asset management plan.
“They’re within the bounds of where they need to be,” said Hallett. “They have an excellent administration and a progressive council. Like many small municipal offices with limited resources, one of the biggest challenges is ensuring records are updated and accessible as efficiently as possible.”
Hallett said Northbound Planning works with many small municipalities across the province. He noted the majority of smaller municipal offices have accurate records; but the information from past decades, including maps and other land ownership and land use data, is still stored on paper documents in filing cabinets. The diverse documents make it challenging to get a comprehensive overall picture of the total infrastructure, and the state of its components, within the municipality.
He said the goal of asset management is to update the records to provide greater efficiency and accessibility, and to enable accurate and sustainable long-term planning.
The municipality’s leadership, he added, needs an accurate picture of the total number and value of all the current roads, waterlines, buildings and other infrastructure. It also needs to forecast future needs.
“The bottom line is that good planning requires cold, hard facts,” said Hallett. “The time to plan is before things happen, not during a crisis.”
He said when an elected council makes decisions affecting the future of their community, they want to base those decisions on the best information available because they are accountable to their ratepayers.
Hallett said the current project is to get the asset management plan in a condition to be continually updated as the needs and priorities of the municipality dictate.