MELFORT — Melfort city council made some final decisions for their $465,000 capital budget during their recent budget meeting.
The Jan. 28 meeting saw the mayor, councillors, and city staff meet over lunch to finalize some spending decisions for the coming year.
Trent Mitchell, chair of the finance committee, said they have approved the total budget amount, with some spending allocations delayed until the fall.
This is because some local improvement projects are dependent on community approval for going ahead and if that does not happen, $160,000 can be distributed to other projects, specifically LED lights for city hall, Kerry Vickar Centre back up power, and a truck for the fire department.
“The local improvement that's being put forward to [property owners] is around curb, gutter, sidewalk, not paving... There's a percentage that the property owner has to pay in order to get those that service.”
One the curb, gutter, sidewalk is in place in those areas of the city, the city will be taking on the maintenance of those services but the property owners do pitch in a certain percentage of the initial cost.
With federal government not having intake of water line replacement projects in the coming year, Mitchell says there are holding out hope until March 31 for getting some federal funding. The Investing in Canada Infrastructure Program (ICIP) splits the costs of approved projects between the municipality, province and the federal government, which Mitchell said the city’s portion is already set aside. If federal funding is not forthcoming in 2021, they will take their portion and focus on certain hard hit water lines.
With the capital budget finalized by council, discussion will continue in the coming weeks on the operations budget.
