Winkler city council did some financial housekeeping at its Sept. 9 meeting—namely, updating its borrowing bylaw for the water treatment plant expansion to reflect the fact the community needs to borrow millions of dollars less than originally expected.
When the project was getting underway, council approved plans to borrow $8 million to pay for the municipal portion of the project. Last week, that required bank loan had dropped to just $4 million.
The community’s part of the $14.8 million expansion comes to just over $7.3 million (contributions of $7.2M and $323,635 from the provincial government and Winkler Meats, respectively, cover the rest), most of which the City of Winkler has been able to cover through other means aside from borrowing.
“We had a number of things that worked in our favour to help us get here,” explained Mayor Henry Siemens. “We had a significant utility surplus in 2024 and we put that towards this project. We’ve also had the benefit of some large capital projects that the province and the federal government have participated in that have allowed us, as they committed their funding towards it, to put those dollars into savings that have generated some interest revenue. So we were able to use that.”
An additional $1 million from the province through the Manitoba Water Services Board as the scope and cost of the project changed also helped bring Winkler’s debt load down, the mayor said, as did the fact that all three of the major capital projects currently underway in the city—the water plant expansion, wastewater treatment build, and Centennial Arena renovations—are on schedule and on budget.
“So we’re on the home stretch on all of these really big capital projects without having to dig into those additional incidentals [funds] that quite often we run into,” Siemens said. “We’ve had, through really good management of our finances through our staff, but also through project management, making sure our projects stay on track, stay on budget, it allows us to come into a bit of a perfect storm of a situation that we’re able to pay down a good chunk of this today with savings and surpluses so that we have to borrow way less money.”
The $4M the city is borrowing is on a five-year payback plan, which means lower interest costs as well long term.
Work on the expansion is basically complete.
“We’re about ready to flip the switch now,” Siemens said, explaining staff are currently doing tests to ensure everything is ready to go.
The upgrades will allow the plant to process 110 litres of water per second—up from 42 l/s previously.
More importantly, though, it will bring efficiency—how much raw water it’s able to successfully recover from the aquifer the community draws from—up from about 70 per cent to approximately 90 per cent.
“That’s a really positive piece because we don’t want to take additional water out of the ground,” Siemens said. “We will be taking a little bit more, but not significantly more because we’ll be able to be so much more efficient in terms of the water that we treat in not having as much reject water.”
The expansion will serve the community to a population size of 25,000.
“Depending on our growth rate, it should take us into the 2040s,” Siemens said.
Fate Of Dog Park Still Undecided
With the water treatment plant project nearing completion, the future of the Winkler Dog Park, formerly located right beside the facility, is still a bit up in the air.
The park was closed through the construction process. City staff have attempted to find alternative sites for it over the past couple of years, but have been unsuccessful.
“We haven’t found another location yet that’s worked,” Siemens said, stressing it’s still very much on the city’s radar as they look to find a suitable long-term home for the park. “It is, I think, a valuable service for our community and it would be great to have another one.
“We will have to take a look and see if there’s still enough room there [at the original location].”
