The contracts have been signed and ground has been broken, but some members of Belleville city council still have concerns about issues around a new police station in the city.

Belleville city council Monday night received a report from staff providing a detailed breakdown of costs for the police station, which total $26.3 million.

However, several councillors reiterated concerns that the project was over the original estimate of $21 million, and came in over that price despite assurances just weeks before the tenders came back that the project was going to be on target.

Coun. Paul Carr noted he asked about the estimate and how close the city was going to be just two weeks before the tenders went out and was told staff expected to be close, only to have the figures come in 14 per cent higher.

“I understand we don’t want to telegraph to companies what we might be willing to pay,” he said. “But when we are told it’s going to be $21 million, when we tell people it’s going to be $21 million, and then it comes in at $26 million, it looks like we dropped the ball.

“We did quite well on a per footage basis in terms of how much this cost. That isn’t the issue. The issue is transparency and communication with council and the public.”

An appendix from architects Shoalts and Zaback in the report to council notes that the Belleville project is $107 per square foot less expensive than a smaller police station project in a neighbouring municipality.

It also notes that with basic price increases since the $21 million estimate in 2013, the 2018 value would be about $25 million.

But the report also contains several memorandum from suppliers noting costs were going to go up significantly for projects due to a variety of factors including labour rate increases and increased duties and tariffs especially on steel.

Coun. Mitch Panciuk said those issues should have been passed on to council, especially when councillors were asking about the project.

“This is not a process that is acceptable to me, especially when councillors ask directly, ‘Do we need to adjust our budget?’” he said. “What else are we expected to do if we ask the question and we don’t get the answer?

“People need to understand that it is not OK to do this just because we can tax our residents and if we need more money than we can just tax them a little more next year.”

CAO Rick Kester suggested that if councillors want more accurate estimates than, at least for larger projects, they might want to take more time before budgeting for the project.

“If council wants better numbers than let’s do more planning before we put out a number,” he said. “For larger projects, we as staff can say to council, ‘We can’t give you a number right now, what we can do is give you a number so we can get a number.’

“But we don’t have the luxury of going behind closed doors to talk about these things and we don’t want to inflate the numbers. If we say publicly we think it’s going to be $30 million, that’s the number we are going to get. That’s just the way it works.”

City council award the contract for construction of the new police facility to Buttcon East Limited at its July 9 meeting.

In other business Monday night, council dealt with several traffic issues, including agreeing to drop the speed limit on Bridge Street to 30 kilometres per hour between Pinnacle and Coleman Streets.

That limit matches the speed limit for the rest of downtown, council was told.

Coun. Jack Miller expressed concern about the “checkerboard” of speed limits on Bridge Street, which will be 50 km/h to Coleman and 50 after Pinnacle, except for a 40 km/h school zone.

He noted that it’s difficult for drivers to get up higher than 30 km/h in the area anyway with the narrow bridge and three lights in three blocks.

Panciuk, who chairs the Traffic Advisory Committee, said the issue is primarily with westbound drivers speeding to catch the light at Pinnacle. He said the police suggested the reduced limit as a safety measure.

As well, the lower speed limit caters to the pedestrian nature of downtown established after the first two phases of downtown reconstruction.

Council also reduced the speed limit on Homan Road at the request of area residents and put in parking restrictions on Ashley Street in Foxboro.

Council did pull for further consideration two motions that would have eliminated left turns on North Front Street from Donald Street and Evans Street.

Those issues will come back to council at a later date.