North Cowichan will borrow the final $11 million required to fund the new $45.5-million headquarters of the North Cowichan/Duncan RCMP detachment on Drinkwater Road, council decided at its meeting on Dec. 18.
The long-term loan from the Municipal Finance Authority of B.C. comes after the municipality initially borrowed $22 million from the MFABC for the new facility in 2022.
North Cowichan has also contributed almost $1.06 million in cash contributions to the project, and the municipality will receive a $10 million loan and $1.5 million grant for the project from the Federation of Canadian Municipalities in 2025, leaving the $11 million that council agreed to borrow over a 20-year term to complete the financing of the building.
Although North Cowichan is borrowing the full $45.5 million to construct the facility, the RCMP and the province are responsible for paying back 60 per cent of costs of the new police detachment.
The original projected budget for the new RCMP facility was approximately $49 million, but North Cowichan’s finance director Teri Vetter said the municipality was fortunate to have the project come in $3.5 million under budget.
She said this is a good news story for North Cowichan and its residents as this project was essentially undertaken through the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The project used an integrated project delivery method approach, meaning consultants and major trades were paired and included in the design team to facilitate accurate pricing and cost-effective decisions among the team as the design process progressed,” Vetter said.
“This led to a collaborative construction process with the architect, engineers, construction manager, and tradespeople working together toward collaborative design solutions.”
Construction of the new RCMP detachment on a five-acre property owned by North Cowichan bordering Ford Road and Drinkwater Road began in 2021 and officially opened last spring.
North Cowichan held an alternative-approval process in 2019 to determine if its municipal voters were in favour of borrowing to fund the new facility, and when only 4.6 per cent of eligible voters in the municipality signed forms in opposition to it during the AAP process, the municipality moved forward with the loan process.
The new three-storey, 50,000 sq. ft. RCMP building is a hub detachment that brings together the North Cowichan/Duncan detachment, Forensic Identification Services, South Island Traffic Services, First Nations Policing and some services of the Shawnigan Lake RCMP detachment under one roof.
The facility replaces the old RCMP detachment on Canada Avenue that was well past the end of its life.
Coun. Chis Istace asked Vetter what the municipality’s debt capacity is currently.
Vetter replied that the she thinks North Cowichan is in a good position.
“After we borrow this [$11 million], we’ll probably have about $85 million left to borrow within our servicing limits,” she said.
Coun. Bruce Findlay noted that the 10-year interest rate of 3.85 per cent, as of the time of the writing of Vetter’s report, that the MFABC is offering North Cowichan on the $11 million loan is an “outstanding rate”.
“I just set a rate on a 10-year mortgage this morning [Dec. 18] at 4.13 per cent, so the rate the MFABC has given us is fantastic in comparison to the market,” he said.
