It’s a little puzzling that we, and apparently Town of Lake Cowichan councillors, are only finding out now that many basic amenities for the Centennial Park upgrade will not be finished.
They won’t be part of the upgrades by the end of the month when the project is slated to be finished because they were not part of the scope of work.
Why not? Nobody seems to know.
We’re talking such basics as fencing, backstops and a parking lot, not superfluous details.
It’s a little bizarre that this came as a surprise to Lake Cowichan’s mayor and councillors at their Oct. 3 parks committee meeting.
How did we get to the finish line and not know that staples of this type of ballfield were not included in the tender?
We can only speculate that we’ve come to this pass because, with funds coming from more than one source, and grants that had specific scope, along with different phases of work, there was some confusion as to what was included in the project and what wasn’t.
But clearly, the ball got dropped somewhere. Because now residents are looking at having to ante up more cash to make the fields usable for their intended purpose.
A parking lot is a basic need, and you really can’t safely hold ball games without backstops. There’s really no choice but to go ahead and get them installed as quickly as possible — which likely won’t be as quickly as most would like, since at the least the parking lot project would likely require a tender process.
The ribbon cutting may have to wait at least several months.
What we hope staff at the town are looking at right now is how things got as far as this with nobody the wiser.
Perhaps in the future there needs to be more communication with the contractor doing the work, along with monitoring as the project progresses, so that if something obvious doesn’t seem to be on the way questions can be raised before the 11th hour.
Especially since it can only be hoped that this won’t be the last time the town is successful in acquiring outside funding for a project. At the least this can be used as a learning experience so nobody’s similarly blindsided in the future.