Lori Sweiger adds some clarification

Town Council

For background see:Town Council Paying for two new buildings concerns Council 

Thank you Lori for the quick additions and clarifications to our article noted above.  We've made the corrections noted in red below and we hope that your letter will add to the story.  We've also added a link from the original article to your note.  Thanks again for reading us. 

The Town of Saugeen Shores always intended to debt finance the cost of the Dr. Earl Medical Centre. There was no official fundraising campaign for this project; however we did receive some significant donations in support of the project and are appreciative of these contributions.

The 2009 Capital Budget recognized the need to borrow $1,510,000 to fund the Medical Building and the final recommendation to borrow after all costs had been accounted for is $1,500,000.

In addition Council and staff were aware that any shortfall in fundraising for the Library project would eventually need to be debt financed. The budgeted fundraising target for 2009 was $406,000 and the final borrowing requirement is $398,000. The recommendation to finalize the borrowing for both projects has been brought forward at this time to wrap up the funding prior to year end at a time when interest rates are favourable.

There was never a question about the requirement to debt finance these projects. Council is not surprised about the need to borrow for either one, but some did identify concerns about the method of borrowing, in particular whether the town was in a position to finance internally rather than going to an outside source for funding.

 

Your report also mentions the rental revenue generated at the Dr. Earl Medical Centre, relative to the operating cost of this facility – the following is taken from your story – the wording in several of the lines should be corrected:

“Sweiger said that $60,000 was the projected revenues figure. "I don't know that we ever expected the rents to fully cover the operating costs," she said. "We haven't had a full year yet so we don't know the final numbers. There was always an expectation that the taxpayer would have to pay part of it."”

The correct wording should be:

“I don’t know that we ever expected the rents to fully cover the debt costs,”

“There was always an expectation that the taxpayer would have to pay part of the debt cost.”

Thanks for your assistance in ensuring that your readers are provided with an accurate account of our financing requirements.

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Tuesday, October 20, 2009