After hearing from the public during this week’s budget open houses, municipal council gets down to business next week, shaping the 2017 budget.
Staff came forward recently with a draft budget that contained a proposed 1.96-per-cent hike. Starting below two per cent is pretty aggressive, especially when you consider more than half of that is to start improving funding to our aging infrastructure. For years, bridges, storm sewers, roads, etc., repeatedly got pushed to the rear.
Other shinier budget issues tend to get to the front of the line. Council traditionally handles them, sees where it stands in terms of a proposed tax increase, and then deals with lifecycle infrastructure funding, or lack thereof. Delaying or underfunding lifecycle spending has left the municipality shorting infrastructure maintenance and replacement to the tune of about $44 million a year, as it barely covers half of what staff says is warranted.
So, not only did staff come forward with the proposed increase that sends funding to infrastructure, Thomas Kelly, general manager of infrastructure and engineering services, told council if it added 0.63 per cent to the proposed increase – shifting it up to 2.59 per cent as a starting point – something special could happen.
No more bridges in the municipality would close. We have in excess of 800 of them across Chatham-Kent. Five have closed already and 22 more are on the cutting block for the near future. Furthermore, some of the bridges with the biggest price tags – such as the Lord Selkirk Bridge in Wallaceburg and the Third and Fifth street bridges in Chatham – are due up for repair or replacement in the coming years.
Kelly’s proposal is to pull $3.5 million in reserve funding that was earmarked for other infrastructure work that council recently shot down and put it to bridge maintenance, along with the 0.63 per cent increase and a portion of the overall infrastructure increase.
Now, we’ll wait and see how council proceeds.
