By George Le Masurier

G iven the level of debate and online scrutiny over a number of recent City of Courtenay financial decisions, you might think the mayor and council have total discretion over how to spend its residents’ tax dollars. You would be wrong.

Like almost every other British Columbia municipality, before the city even starts work on next year’s financial plan, most of the budget has already been spent or dictated by the province.

Things like water and sewer services, police and fire services, recreational and cultural services and financial items like amortization and debt interest will have already consumed about 65 percent of the revenue. When it comes to general operations, your elected officials have limited discretionary choices.

This may be why some candidates in this year’s municipal election have zeroed in on the incumbent’s capital expenditures. It’s a common misconception that council has complete discretion over its Capital Improvement Plan. But, in reality, only a small portion of each Capital Budget has not been mandated by the province or failing infrastructure.

It is true, however, that each new mayor and council prioritizes a few projects for their multi-year Capital Improvement Plan (CIP).

For better or worse, the current City Council included the recently opened Sixth Street Bridge in its last capital plan. The pedestrian and cycling bridge became an instant lightning rod for critics and candidates in the Oct. 17 municipal elections.

One of those disparaging the bridge this year is mayoral candidate Manno Theos, a former Courtenay Councillor, who championed the bridge decision in 2019. Seven years later, he’s calling it “The bridge to nowhere,” while his supporters call it “unnecessary spending.”

Let’s take a closer look at how the Sixth Street bridge bounced around and came to life.

 

WHOSE IDEA WAS IT?

The bridge has a storied history involving many people and many design variations. It had more starts and stops than a vehicle trying to cross the 17th St. bridge on a Friday afternoon.

The original idea for a Courtenay foot bridge at Sixth Street arose during the 1980s, when it was mentioned in the Official Community Plan. It popped up again, during the planning for Simms Park in the 1990s. A sketch of the park design shows the bridge.

IT’S A GO – But the bridge started to get real legs in 2005 when the Sunrise Rotary Club supported the concept and made plans to construct it using community donations and volunteer labor. They envisioned a Timber frame structure.

NO GO – The city abandoned the Rotary Club plan after engineers ruled out the wood construction for various reasons, including maintenance and public safety.

IT’S A GO – Then, in 2016, business and property owners in the downtown district held a charrette in conjunction with the city to gather ideas for a downtown revitalization. The Downtown Playbook document that emerged from those planning sessions included a bridge for foot and bicycle traffic.

NO GO – But then-mayor Larry Jangula did not make the bridge a priority, so the city never followed up on that item from the Downtown Playbook.

IT’S ANOTHER GO – When a new mayor and council were elected in 2018, they engaged staff to focus on the Downtown Playbook and an update to the city’s Official Community Plan. The bridge became a piece in council’s movement toward more active transportation corridors and the further development of Simms Park.

NOPE, STILL A NO GO – The Sixth Street bridge stalled again, however, because the city discovered that for public safety reasons, a restoration of the Fifth Street bridge had to take priority.

Before the Fifth Street project started, city staff floated an option to add four-foot wide cantilevers for cyclists on both sides of the bridge. This would have cost $1 million (less than the Sixth Street bridge option), but it would have added an extra six weeks to the partial bridge closure for construction.

A GO? – Council leaned toward approving the cantilevers plan, although staff later cooled on the idea in favor of returning to the Sixth Street bridge plan. Cantilevers would be less expensive. They could be constructed quicker than an entire new bridge.

 

THE TURNING POINT

NOT SO FAST — At the Sept. 3, 2019 council meeting, Jenny Deters, a business owner and president of the Downtown Business Association, led a delegation on behalf of 200 business owners and the Chamber of Commerce to oppose the cantilevering option and to urge council to build the Sixth Street bridge.

You can watch the video of her presentation and council members’s response starting at 20:23 in the video below.

Deters said a majority of business owners supported the Fifth Street bridge restoration and also supported “alternate modes of transportation and more cycling to get around the Valley.”

She told council that Downtown businesses would suffer lost revenue during to the six month Fifth Street bridge closure. And that they feared another six weeks to add cantilevers could be catastrophic. Deters praised Sixth Street as a better investment. She predicted that a foot and cycle bridge at Sixth Street would become a tourist attraction and a beautification of the downtown area.

Deters went so far as to call the bridge a long-time vision of past councils and citizens and that the bridge was “strategic to the revitalization” of downtown Courtenay. She pleaded with council to “do the bridge sooner than later,” and drop the plan for cantilevers.

MANNO TO THE RESCUE – Councillor Manno Theos praised Deters’s presentation at the 2019 meeting and endorsed her plea to build the Sixth Street bridge instead of adding cantilevers. And he also made a prediction, “This (decision for cantilevers versus Sixth Street) will be an issue that is going to end up defining this council.” See his comments starting at 30:55 in the video.

If the council voted to proceed with cantilevers, Theos said, they would pay a heavy political price. He warned that voters might toss them out of office.

“It’s going to be a hurricane for many of the councillors sitting at this table. We claimed the downtown core was one of our biggest issues … if we fail you (Downtown) now, we are going to be judged three years from now (2022 elections), certainly.”

In his effusive support for building the Sixth Street bridge, Theos went on to say that adding cantilevers would eliminate the possibility of a future bridge at Sixth Street bridge because doing both was not possible, “Especially now with significant tax increases coming forward at us.”

Theos said he supported a bridge at Sixth Street for safety reasons and also “moving it into nature … a more nature setting.”

Finally, in 2020, about 40 years after the idea originated, council approved the Sixth Street bridge and included it in the city’s capital budget. Council didn’t know if or when they would build the bridge, but it was a requirement to include the project in their capital plan in order to apply for grants.

IT’S A GO, AGAIN – When the federal government awarded Courtenay a $2.5 million grant, the project suddenly became a go. It was the largest federal grant for an active transportation project in Canadian history.

MAYBE NOT – But, in the years following the Covid pandemic, prices had escalated for everything across North America. The original cost estimate of $4 million to $6 million leaped to nearly $11 million (the exact cost will be known this fall when the accounting is completed).

Faced with such an increase, at its March 12, 2025 meeting, the council again considered dropping the project. They had three options to consider:

1) approve the bridge at the higher cost;

2) refer the matter back to the engineering department to examine previous design options to see if there was a less expensive solution;

or 3) cancel the project entirely.

Councillors were divided on what to do. Will Cole-Hamilton urged council to choose the second option to have engineering staff review other viable bridge designs. However, a council majority voted to go ahead with the bridge.

YES, YES – In the end, the council decided to proceed because the cost would only keep escalating and the city would lose the federal grant.

Courtenay Mayor Bob Wells told Decafnation that he supported the bridge when the cost was $6.9 million. But he hesitated at the cost escalation.

“But with the grants of $5.55 million, our final cost would be less than the original $6.9 million,” Wells said. “As the project finished ahead of schedule and under budget, it will cost our taxpayers even less.”

 

WHAT IT COST

The city obtained $5.55 million in grants for the bridge, including $2.5 million from the Active Transportation Fund, $2.555 million from the Growing Communities Fund and $500,000 from the Canada Community Building Fund. The city is expected to use $3.75 million in long-term borrowing and $1.8 million from surplus and reserves.

The final cost of the bridge is unknown, though it is expected to come in under $11 million. The final accounting of bridge costs will complete this fall.