When the new city council sits down in December, one of the first big decisions it will have to deal with isn’t how to house the homeless.

It’s what to do with the Johnson Street bridge.

The blue behemoth has spanned the Inner Harbour since 1922 but the concrete piers that anchor its steel frame are disintegrating.

An engineering report is coming soon, but its recommendation will likely be for either costly repairs or a new bridge. The price tag for either has yet to be set.

The City of Victoria, like most Canadian cities, has an infrastructure deficit - a 2007 report from the Federation Canadian of Municipalities pegged the total at $123 billion to get all of the country’s roads, sewers and bridges up to snuff.

There’s no telling just how much Victoria needs to spend, said Peter Sparanese, the city’s director of engineering. What makes the city unique is how much of that deficit is coming due.

Most of the city’s clay sewer pipes, for example, were laid before 1920 and breaks are becoming more common.

“The city owns a lot of infrastructure, a lot of its the roads, water, drain, sewer and electrical systems for lighting and traffic signals and assets such as our buildings,” said Sparanese.

“I think something a lot of the time people may not appreciate is the importance and the significance of infrastructure in supporting the economic vitality and quality of life for the community.”

The city owns $1.7 billion worth of infrastructure in all, Sparanese said, but the total amount that needs to be invested to keep it all in good shape is unknown.

“We’re doing inventories (and) condition assessments to determine what the status is of the various infrastructure and then to be able to do some predictions and modeling - what’s the life of the sewer system, for example.”

Some of the bills the city will be facing have been reaching council in recent months.

In August, council started down the path of funding 67 kilometres of new sidewalks, with an estimated cost of $28 million over 20 years. Last week, council approved a $5-million contract for rehabilitation of the city’s steel water mains, which are being corroded and pitted by acids in the soil.

Climate change could throw infrastructure planning a curveball, said John Sturdy, assistant director of utilities and facilities.

“We look at what the capacity of our storm sewer system is now and we can model it and we use historical storm data ... but that one-in-50-year storm we use, is that going to be changing dramatically in the coming years?,” he asked.

The costs could also vary as new technology becomes available for some projects.

A pilot project, funded by $3 million in federal gas tax money, is using new “trenchless” technology to line nine kilometres of leaking pipes in James Bay without digging up roads - that could lead to cost savings in future projects, said Ed Robertson, assistant director of public works. Conventional technology could have cost as much as $12 million.

The city isn’t being caught completely flat-footed in paying for all of the work. Council has been setting money aside in reserve funds, contributing $4.8 million in 2008.

Sparanese gets excited about the nitty-gritty stuff of keeping the city’s property functioning. While it might not be the big-issue stuff that attracts most people into politics, it is a large part of the city’s job.

“Our responsibility as the engineering department is to apprise council of what the challenges and opportunities are in terms of the infrastructure and their responsibilities in terms of what they own,” he said.

Making good on that advice will be up to the mayor and eight councillors elected Nov. 15.

kvass@vicnews.com