Pason Centennial Arena is set to begin its twinning construction in the next few months but like most things, it isn't going to be cheap for the Town of Okotoks.

Town Council amended their budget Monday on the arena twinning which will now cost $1,000,000 more than original planned.

Okotoks Town Councillor Tanya Thorn

Councillor Tanya Thorn says the Town still made the decision to go through with the construction that will now have a $15,000,000 price tag on it.

"We've already approved the arena we had approved a budget of $14 million for the due diligence and the actual construction of the arena," she says. "What came before us yesterday was a budget amendment to $15 million."

Financial's were not released to the public as council did go in camera for that process of the amendment because the construction bid hasn't been approved yet, but Thorn says it was a decision council had to make in order to keep things moving for ground breaking.

"Ultimately with what we've come through with the bidding process it was deemed that we needed to increase the budget down that path."

The vote to approve the amendment was 5-1 with Thorn being the only against, being supportive of the construction of the arena but raised questions about why such an increase in spending.

"We've given a budget that made sense in our financial plans under our capital planning and this is a fairly major budget amendment and I felt we don't have the supporting information as to what we need that extra $1 million for."

Twinning for the arena is project to be completed in time for the 2017-2018 hockey & skating season.

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