Regional council looking at different sources of funding for new transit hub

Regional officials received an update about the new King-Victoria transit hub Tuesday at the committee of the whole meeting. 

Craig Dyer, the region's Chief Financial Officer said the region would need more time to come up with the sources of funding for the project.

“[We would] need to make a request to the Ministry of Transportation to extend the timeframe of the King-Victoria transit hub transfer payment agreement regardless of how this plays out, we are going to need some additional time relative to what's currently in the agreement,” Dyer said.

Dyer added the region would need to direct staff to submit an application to the 'Investing in Canada Infrastructure Program Transit Stream (ICIP) for an estimate of $73.1-million in incremental costs. 

The current transfer payment agreement that the region has right now is for $33-million of 100 per cent funding for regional infrastructure.

“What we are recommending is that we submit an application for the costs over-and-above for that $33-million,” said Dyer, “subject to the approval of such an application, we would then allocate $53.4-million being 73 per cent of the $73.1-million.”

An additional recommendation that was presented to council is to explore additional funding sources including development charges and contributions from VIA Rail, the FCM Green Municipal Fund, and other streams of funding available to the region. 

“The key points that we've set out in the report is that the revised cost-estimate is currently sitting at $106.1-million,” he said, “we've gone through a couple of more iterations of design and made a preliminary determination of what's in-scope and what's out-of-scope,” Dyer said. 

The region has been attempting to secure additional 100 per cent funding from the province with no success and it has forced the region to reconsider funding strategies and look to see if there is a different way to make this project happen and find the funding for the additional cost. 

“The ICIP funds 73 per cent of eligible project expenditures and that's 40 per cent from the federal government, and 33 per cent from the province,” Dyer said, “the other 27 per cent, we would have to find through other sources,” he said. 

Dyer said that $53-million could be accessed in existing ICIP subsidy for the transit hub. 

“We aren't asking for any more money, we aren't asking for a new program to be put in place, we're working within the confines of the existing funding allocation that has been provided to the Region of Waterloo.”

The region currently has $212-million in funding capacity that has not yet been approved that could be utilized. 

Councillor Berry Vrbanovic noted that an additional source of revenue and funding that the region could receive for this project is if it looked at selling naming rights to the transit hub in order to make-up some of the rest of the funding that is required to ensure this project gets the money it needs to move forward.

Dyer said that he's not familiar with any specific examples but it's something that the region can add to the list as it works through the due diligence of its sources of funding to see if that's an opportunity. 

Vrbanovic said that he believes it's worthwhile to think about it to see if there's anything that's possible to help with the missing funding.