Former Union Hospital - Question Asked If Dumping Fees Waived For Province

During discussion at Wednesday evening’s special meeting of Council surrounding the proposal to crush reclaimed cement - much of it from the demolition of the Moose Jaw Union Hospital - the question was asked if the Province had paid tipping fees to the City for the disposal of the material.

“Question for Administration when the Union Hospital was demolished did we bill for dumping fees?” Councillor Brian Swanson asked.

With Administration unable to answer the question Councillor Swanson asked “does anyone remember waving fees or anything like that. Because if we are going to do the analysis of this I hate for us to have given the Province a super deal on all that waste.”

“I am getting we did not charge for the dumping of this material,” he said.

In response city manager Jim Puffalt replied “We can certainly find out but I do not know what impact that has on this report…crushing concrete and asphalt s something many municiplaties do and it is a good practice.”

“We had a demolition of a Provincial repsonsible building and we dumed it in the yards and I am just hoping we didn’t say to them you don’t have to pay the dumping fees because then we would have saved the Province a pile of money that we might have had as a revenue. And we might have struck a deal a dollar less per tonne or something to dump it in the City yards,” Councillor Swanson said.

“Did we let the Province off the hook for dumping all of this material?” Councillor Swanson asked.

Regarding the dumping fees Puffalt said “We will certainly endeavour to provide that information and perhaps we are making some money off of the Province still. It may be a good thing we don’t know.”

“How would we do that?” Councillor Swanson asked.

“By crushing the product and selling it at our site,” Puffalt responded.

“Well I bet it is a lot less than collecting a dumping fee,” Councillor Swanson said.

Administration will provide the information regarding whether or not the dumping fees were charged to the Province for the demolition materials from the former Union Hospital at a later date.