The price tag for utility work at a downtown Kitchener intersection now sits at $1.3 million – more than triple what city officials had budgeted for the cost.
Initially, it was expected that work to relocate natural gas lines at Duke and Frederick streets would cost $400,000.
The increase has one councillor feeling like the city was “ripped off” by a higher level of government.
“When I first heard about it … it just blew me away,” Coun. Frank Etherington said Tuesday.
The relocation is being done in advance of light rail transit construction at the intersection.
According to regional councillor Tom Galloway, the work was supposed to happen earlier this year – but was delayed when the city issued a new tender for the project, hoping to get its cost down below the $400,000 mark.
“The tender came back even higher … than what they could have had earlier in the year,” he said.
“Now … it’s even more costly, and they’re looking at winter construction.”
Etherington says the increase is due to insistence that the LRT construction schedule be adhered to, so that the system can be up and running by 2017.
“We would not go ahead and do this job if the city was doing it, at this cost, in the winter,” he said.
Four more gas lines are being relocated in Kitchener next year along the LRT route.
Costs for that work have not been determined.
