A pair of infrastructure projects in Melville will not go ahead this year.

Two proposals for replacing a water and sewer line on 3rd Avenue East and the paving of Toronto Street were rejected by City Council due to the tenders being over budget.

Earlier this year, the City had budgeted the projects mentioned above at a total cost of $1,333,000.00.

One proposal had a total cost of $2,049,727, which is $716,727 over budget, while the other had a total cost of $1,859,088.00, over budget by $526,088.

“We are pretty late in the year to get these tenders out. We were hoping to be able to accomplish this work this year, but unfortunately Council voted in favour of tendering it next year and hopefully get some more competitive tenders in.” Public Works Manager Andrew Fahlman said.

Another reason, Fahlman mentioned, was the high cost of supplies, such as the water line going up by 125 dollars per metre, the sewer line up by 230 dollars per metre as well as an increase to the cost of ashphalt and concrete.

However not all was lost, as Fahlman says City Council approved a Request for Quotations for the paving of Queen Street and 7th Avenue – a busy intersection in Melville.

“It is utilized by almost everybody in our community. It’s a very high traffic zone so if we can extract that out of the big tender document, accomplish that small project this year, then that’ll be affordable for us to do this year, and then accomplish the rest next year.”