Timing tight to pick up federal cash; Municipalities lining up for project grants worry they could lose out
Times Colonist (Victoria)
Mon 25 May 2009
Page: A3
Section: Capital & Van. Isl.
Byline: Bill Cleverley
Source: Times Colonist
Municipal politicians across the country worry that the window of opportunity for federal infrastructure funds is starting to close.
"These funds are coming out late, and every second we delay in getting the funds out, the windows close," said Hans Cunningham, a Federation of Canadian Municipalities vice-president and Kootenay regional director.
"I'm from the Interior so our construction season ends in, probably October, when we start to look at our first snowfall. Up in the north, the same types of things are happening."
Greater Victoria municipalities are queuing up for money for projects that range in scope from Victoria's bid to replace the Johnson Street Bridge at an estimated $60-million tab to $2 million to replace a Saanich sewer lift station in Portage Inlet and almost $2 million to refurbish Esquimalt's Archie Browning Sports Centre.
The federal government announced its two-year, $4-billion Infrastructure Stimulus Fund program in January as part of its $12-billion strategy to kick-start the economy. Under the program, Ottawa and the relevant province each kick in one third of the cost of approved municipal-infrastructure projects.
But four months after the announcement, not much ground had been broken on "shovel ready" projects. Weather is not as much of a concern on Vancouver Island. But the tight timeline, coupled with federal requirements for vetting applications, is starting to jeopardize some of the projects, said Saanich Mayor Frank Leonard.
"There are a lot of concerns right now," Leonard said, noting projects are required to be completed by March 2011.
James Morton
1100-5255 Yonge Street
Toronto, Ontario
M2N 6P4
416 225 2777
1 comment:
Jim, there's the flaw in the Harper/Ignatieff stimulus budget. It's just moving food around on a plate. Victoria is going to try to move up replacement of the Johnson Street bridge by a year. That project was going ahead anyway. There's no new stimulus spending involved. It's merely being brought forward so that the cost can be handed off to the federal government rather than local taxpayers.
Neither leader understands that this sort of recession-fighting, stimulus spending needs to be on "new" projects. Rescheduling existing projects to offload costs isn't stimulus spending at all.
Stimulus spending is supposed to be directed to infrastructure investments that will generate returns ten years down the road when the tax/deficit bill comes due. Think of the public works initiatives of FDR.
That Johnson Street bridge won't be returning one dime more ten years from now because the funding came from Ottawa rather than Victoria. It has all the return on investment potential of throwing a new deck on your cottage.
The Brookings Institute has an excellent paper on stimulus spending that shows that simply throwing money around achieves very little. It's where that money goes and how it's made to work in the economy that's most important.
I think the Harper/Ignatieff budget is a tribute to cowardice. Harper didn't want to be responsible for how the money was spent so he chose, instead, to give it to others to spend. That Ignatieff let him get away with that irresponsibility is tragic and hardly builds confidence in the Liberal leader either.
Post a Comment