City council approved a tender for roof repairs to Weyburn City Hall, during their meeting held on Zoom on Monday evening.
Council was told that a section of the roof on the northwest side of the building had failed, and elements from the outdoors was leaking in.
“Significant leaks have occurred causing damage to the interior of the building and have forced staff members to relocate office spaces and has left office space no longer usable,” said a report by Andrew Crowe, director of leisure services.
Three quotes for repairs were received, ranging in price from $39,760, to $50,105, to the highest quote of $75,106.
Crowe explained the major differences in price was the first two quotes did not include the removal of the roof unit, but the highest quote did.
In the end, council accepted the recommendation of staff to go with the highest quote, from Flynn Canada, as engineers feel the roof unit is the area of the leakages and will need to be removed and reinstalled once the roof repairs are done.
Each of the quotes were for different roofing solutions, said Crowe. The lowest bid, from Seal It Up Roofing, was for a ballasted roof system, which is the same as the existing roof system.
Clark Roofing suggested a heat-applied torch-on bitumen roof system, which is similar to what is used on other city facilities, and Flynn Canada’s quote was for a Sopralene cold-applied top cap product.
Crowe added that there are some areas under the leak that will need repairs, mainly to the roofing tiles.
• In other council business, a motion that had been tabled for the purchase of a new refuse truck was again tabled, after a councillor questioned if a whole new truck was needed or just a repair on the arm mechanism that picks up the refuse bins.
The motion was to buy a 2021 Freightliner M2-106 refuse truck with an arm cycle counter and auxiliary arm controls, for a total price of $307,966, without a trade-in.
Coun. Winston Bailey said he watched the City’s secondary refuse truck go down his street on garbage day, and it worked quite well.
“I’m struggling to spend $307,000 at this time. Is the apparatus the problem with this truck? Have we looked at that cost versus spending more than $307,000?” he asked.
Coun. Dick Michel disagreed with tabling this motion yet again, and said while he understands the difficulty Coun. Bailey has with spending this amount of money, “garbage is still going to be there no matter what condition we are in with COVID-19. I don’t think we can delay this any further. It takes quite a while to get this truck. We still have to look after our citizens, and we have to look after the garbage that’s out there.”
Coun. Bailey countered by pointing out that a repair expense of $25-30,000 would be far easier to bear than spending $307,000 on a new truck, and insisted that administration find out if that is all that is needed.
On the motion to table this to the May 11 council meeting, the vote was 5-2 in favour, with Mayor Marcel Roy and Coun. Michel against.
• Coun. Jeff Chessall announced that he had just set up a new web page on Monday for Weyburn Gift Card Days, as a way for city and area residents to support local businesses during this hard economic time of shutdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
He noted he got the idea from Barb Helfrick, who had promoted National Take-out Day recently, and thought if businesses could promote providing gift cards that could be used later when they are able to open again to business, this might help the business community out.
“Businesses can sign up for free, and people can go to the website and purchase gift cards,” said Coun. Chessall, noting that there will be a special week of promotion for this, from May 11 to May 15.
“We’re going to make the push that week. It’s a great way to enjoy Weyburn and support businesses,” he said.
The website is called Weyburngiftcarddays.com, and it will be updated daily with more information to follow.
