By Andrew de Souza

City hoping to fund infrastructure innovation

Jul 1, 2011 | 9:15 AM

Prince Albert is partnering with other municipalities, researchers and businesses in the province to find new ways to tackle the growing problem of infrastructure.

The city has invested in a pool of money administered by the Saskatchewan group known as Communities of Tomorrow.

It’s a non-profit corporation and is designed to help fund research and development of various technologies hoping to extend the life, reduce the maintenance or otherwise innovate any number of infrastructure project cities have to deal with.

“The end goal is to create those infrastructure technologies that’ll make the infrastructure better,” said Michael Zaplitny with the organization.

“Cheaper to construct, or cheaper to maintain and longer lasting.”

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Zaplitny said the pool would be spent according to the needs of the partner municipalities in order to tackle the most important issues.

“The work is ongoing in terms of collaborating with the municipalities in order to make sure the money is spent on issues that are high priority to them and what exact projects the money’s invested in,” he said.

Prince Albert is one of 14 communities investing and has chipped in about $15,000.

City Manager Robert Cotterill said it’s well worth the cost because it puts the money of many communities to work towards everybody’s benefit.

“Municipalities generally don’t have the ability to research and find new ways of doing things,” said Cotterill.

“This is a nice partnership between government, academia, municipalities and business to find solutions to problems we all have.”

Cotterill said it was also important because infrastructure problems are continuing to become more serious—and more expensive.

“We need successes here. We can’t just keep funding things without the potential that it’s going to work,” he said.

“We need the right people at the table, we need people who understand the problems and what we’re trying to solve.”

The city’s contribution is part of a $300,000 investment pool. All the money stays within the province by going to Saskatchewan-based companies and research groups.

adesouza@panow.com