West Perth CAO Jeff Brick says the municipality’s new municipal office, located next to the new firehall in Mitchell, is finished in terms of the budgeting process, and is basically under budget.
The project was costed out at $3.654 million, and Brick says that is higher than the original forecast of $3.541 million.
“The reason for the overage is directly related to some supply chain issues we had, and we added a few items to the project that weren’t in the original project budget,” explained Brick.
Brick says despite the uptick in total cost, the actual construction cost is something they’re quite happy with.
“That final price, with those extra project additions, puts us at $260 per square foot, for construction costs, so we’re quite happy with that. The construction part of the project actually came in within $1,000 of being on budget,” Brick added.
The municipality was originally thinking of financing some of the cost of the project, as Brick notes, but ended up choosing to use money they had available in reserves and through upcoming land sales to fully fund the project themselves, along with a grant. That means the municipality won’t have to pay back any outstanding future interest payments for the new municipal office, located at 170 Wellington Street in Mitchell. Brick adds that previous councils had been saving money in reserves the last 10-15 years in order to help fund the project, which in hindsight ended up being a very good and beneficial idea.
Additionally, West Perth actually technically came in $40,000 under budget once everything was said and done, and Brick says that’s because the initial revenues that they anticipated it would cost to do the project, with reserves, a grant they received and land sale money factored in, was $40,000 more than they ended up needing.
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