By battlefordsNOW Staff

Mayors watching for infrastructure details in budget

Mar 22, 2016 | 7:33 AM

Local water and sewer systems are expected to be among the first priorities for the Liberal government’s budget on Tuesday. But local mayors say they’ll be watching for details.

Battleford’s Mayor Derek Mahon said the Saskatchewan Urban Municipalities Association and the Federation of Canadian Municipalities have been lobbying for funding, so he’s interested in what might be put forward.

“There’s been lots of talk about infrastructure spending that would be carried out in this budget,” he said on Monday. “We’ll have to see how it flows down through the agreements between the provincial government, the federal government, and municipalities.”

In Meadow Lake, Mayor Gary Vidal said he’s interested in what the funding models are and how much money might be available to fund infrastructure.

“The old Building Canada funding models have always generally been on a one third, one third, one third basis where the federal, provincial and municipal government would share costs on approved projects,” he said. “There’s been some talk of that being different or varied. There’s been some talk that part of the reason the federal government committed to running deficits in the election campaign was to speed up the access to infrastructure funding for municipal governments across the country.”

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Meadow Lake city council will be watching to see how everything unfolds and how much money would be available for any infrastructure projects the city might have on the go.

“I don’t know if there’s anything we are expecting in particular, it’ll just be a matter of what will the model be going forward and how much money will be available to share the costs of upgrading, maintaining or doing some new infrastructure projects,” Vidal said.

Mahon doesn’t expect to see specific details of cash to replace the water and sewer mains on the 300 block of 29th St. in Battleford, money that was announced in August 2015 under the Building Canada fund.

-With files Matt Kelly and Colton Swiderski

news@battlefordsnow.com

Twitter: @battlefordsNOW