Wise infrastructure investment saves money

Governments own the infrastructure you use every day that contributes to your quality of life. You trust government to invest wisely to take care of these assets, but could they be spending your tax dollars more wisely to maintain this infrastructure?

Wise investment in infrastructure should be like appropriately investing in your house. You own your house and you want to take care of it. For instance, you know your roof has an expected life span and every moment of not replacing the roof past that life span leads to increased risk. If you leave it too long you will not only have to pay for new shingles, but also the plywood underneath, new gyprock for ceilings and walls and maybe new carpets and underlay because of water damage that occurred because you didn’t attend to the roof.

What can homeowners do when it comes time to replace the shingles and they don’t have enough money saved for the maintenance bill? One option is for them to borrow the money. At today’s interest rates, and even significantly higher interest rates, the borrowing costs associated with just replacing the shingles will be much less than the repair costs necessary after damage occurs.

Right now, governments are paying significantly more for infrastructure maintenance and replacement than they should be because of years of deferring infrastructure maintenance costs. Governments have historically postponed infrastructure maintenance in times of economic slowdown in the name of fiscal restraint.

But is this really cost effective? Much like the homeowner example above, governments end up spending significantly more money than is necessary keeping dated infrastructure operating than if they had simply maintained the infrastructure when it was appropriate to do so.

Many homeowners also know that if they invest a little bit now in maintaining systems in their homes, they will not have to replace them as often. Governments have only recently started down this path in a coordinated way of inventorying all their capital assets and determining when they need to be replaced. This process is called asset management.

However, the scary fact is that much of Saskatchewan’s infrastructure is already past its useful life. A disproportionate amount of it is at crisis level simply because governments in the past decided they could save some money by deferring infrastructure maintenance and repair.

Members of the Association of Consulting Engineering Companies – Saskatchewan (ACEC-SK) see the results of this deferred infrastructure maintenance every day. We continue to advance the position that government must sustain its investment in infrastructure or it will incur significantly increased and often extraordinary maintenance costs that are unnecessary. Investing in timely maintenance and repairs will save taxpayers money which, in turn, could be reinvested in developing new and maintaining current infrastructure.

As a member of the public you should tell politicians investing wisely in infrastructure will save them – and you – money.