BOYLE – The Village of Boyle has officially set its 2025 capital budget, which features funding for road repairs, recreational opportunities, and a change at the local airport.
During the Jan. 15 meeting, councillors voted to unanimously approve the budget, which also features roughly $1 million in grant-dependent funding for the community’s water/wastewater structures.
“Now more than ever, there’s been a lot of things that have been identified and are being looked after,” said Mayor Colin Derko.
“Streets are obviously taking precedence as far as dollars go, there’s a lot of dollars being invested into our infrastructure. It’s been a long time coming.”
The total budget is for $2.4 million, with $685,000 going towards road patches and chip sealing. Councillors approved two projects for tender after the budget had passed, including $125,000 for micro-sealing Third Street south from Taylor Road to Clintberg Avenue, and then from Highway 831 to Fourth Street.
“We’re being strategic about this because last year, one of the quotes said they could do it for about $160,000,” said CAO Warren Griffen, who said the repairs had been slated for 2024 but had to be cancelled due to budgetary restrictions.
“The biggest thing is to save these roads so we don’t have to spend quadruple later on,” said Derko.
Road patching is also on the docket for 2025, with $560,000 towards fixes on: Hill Drive, Third Avenue East, Hospital Road, and Second Avenue East.
“We can hopefully cover a lot of ground in town and extend lifespans and improve our roads,” said Griffin. “I’m all about getting it done while we can — it’s not going to get cheaper.”
In addition to the work that’s supposed to be done in 2025, Derko said administration has been working to have a plan in place for the future as well.
“If a resident comes to us and says, ‘When are you guys going to fix my road,’ now we can actually say an answer, whereas before it was just, ‘Yeah well, you know, we’re getting to it,” said Derko.
“We didn’t have those plans in place before, so we’re getting to be more comfortable with our planning so we can plan years in advance and tell residents that, your tax dollars are being saved today so that in 2027 we can pave road XYZ.”
Community recreation
The village also put aside money for community recreation spots, including regrading and new shale for a baseball diamond, adding new pickleball nets, and fixing washrooms and furnaces in various buildings.
“We rely a lot on our volunteer groups to let us know what their needs are,” said Derko.
“We’ve had groups come to us where they said, we want to take on hosting provincials here in Boyle, but we can’t do it without a certain thing.”
In total, the village will spend $133,000 on recreation this year, and is planning for more work in the coming years. According to the five-year capital plan passed alongside this year’s budget, 2026 should feature $45,000 for recreation projects, and 2028 will include new equipment for the arena, to the tune of $750,000.
“It’s basically a community vision focused on the users,” said Derko, who cited the spray park as an example of a community-driven project.
Overall, councillors said they were happy with the budget, which Derko praised as doing the work he wanted to do when he first ran for office.
“I’m pretty excited about a lot of the things in the budget; a lot of what is being done here is why I wanted to run for council,” he said.
“Infrastructure was important to me, and it seems to be important to everyone else too. Potholes are a pain in the ass and crappy streets don’t make for a nice cover to a book either. I’m seeing a lot of the stuff we’ve been working on in the last term and in this term coming to fruition.”
