Lethbridge City Hall. (Lethbridge News Now)

By David Opinko

Lethbridge Council to potentially look at selling some city facilities

May 26, 2020 | 11:05 AM

LETHBRIDGE, AB – It was recently suggested to the City of Lethbridge that they could sell upwards of 30 per cent of all of their facilities.

That was one finding of KPMG’s first phase of its operational review last November.

Since then, the city’s Asset Manager Blair Richter was tasked with looking into how specific facility assessments could be conducted.

“It’s basically a combination of identifying the functional scores and the financial impacts to selling different city facilities, so that’s kind of our process.”

On the one end, Richter and his team will determine what the functional score is for a certain amenity. This will include things like how functional it is, how it is utilized and to what extent, the location, and how versatile it is.

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Under the financial impact, details such as ongoing operating costs and how much life the facility has left in it will be investigated.

Depending on the overall score, Richter will make recommendations to either sell it, repair or upgrade, repurpose, or keep it as it is.

The proposed facility scoring framework. (City of Lethbridge)

Currently, the City of Lethbridge owns 345 buildings, ranging from small maintenance sheds to the ATB Centre. Including assets like Exhibition Park and Park Place Mall where the city owns and leases the land, this totals 3.2 million square feet of space.

Richter told council this week that, per capita, Lethbridge has a higher operating cost and more facility square footage than other municipalities they were compared to like Medicine Hat, Red Deer, and a few municipalities in Ontario.

By selling some of its assets and finding efficiencies in others, KPMG estimated that the City of Lethbridge could find upwards of $15-million in savings.

This matter is expected to come back to council at next Monday’s meeting.

If they decide to go ahead with the facility assessments, it is expected that they will tell Richter and his team which assets they should investigate.