The mayor says he welcomes all opinions regarding a possible mask bylaw, including those of two local physicians on opposite sides of the debate.--NEWS FILE PHOTO
mcranker@medicinehatnews.com@mocranker
With the province announcing more than $1 billion in funding for provincial municipalities earlier this week, Medicine Hat’s mayor is hoping to make use of the money.
The funding is a mixture of federal and provincial money and is aimed at building shovel-ready infrastructure projects starting this year. It is also there to help with municipal operating costs during the COVID-19 pandemic and to help support public transportation costs.
“I think like every other municipality, we’ll take what we can get,” said Mayor Ted Clugston. “We don’t have the exact number yet, but we’re about 1.5 or 1.6 per cent of the population of Alberta. We expect to get about $8 million for capital and about $4 million for operating.
“Again, we don’t have the numbers yet, but those are a rough estimate of what we could be looking at in Medicine Hat.”
Clugston says there are a lot of projects that could make use of the added funding.
“There’s a number of capital projects that would benefit from this,” he said. “One I can think of is the water treatment plant upgrades.
“On the operation side, we’ve been running transit at a loss and various other things at losses. We’ve had to close down facilities like the leisure centre and the library, and there’s been a lot of revenue lost in not having them open.
“We’re happy and we’re thankful for this funding.”
Clugston hopes to see the money dispersed fairly.
“A big concern for me is that Calgary and Edmonton haven’t looked after their finances as well as Medicine Hat has,” he said. “I don’t think that would be a fair reason for them to get more than their fair share – just because they’re in more trouble than we are.
“I just hope Medicine Hat is able to get our per-capita amount, hopefully like everyone else does.”
Clugston says the city was asked to submit a list of capital projects right at the beginning of the pandemic and that he believes funding is for projects that haven’t started yet.
“I think the province is looking for projects that need some money to get past their tipping point,” he said. “The best example I have is the water treatment plant, because we need to do more with it and it’s very expensive.”
