Mayors await details of $1B infrastructure fund
Municipal leaders in the South Okanagan are waiting with bated breath to find out how the province plans to distribute a billion-dollar windfall to local governments.
Premier David Eby announced Feb. 10 his government is setting up a new Growing Communities Fund, which will be seeded with $1 billion from the current provincial surplus and distributed by the end of March.
The cash is meant to help communities catch up with population growth by spending on in-demand infrastructure of their own choosing, anything from recreation facilities and parks to water treatment plants and roads. Crucially, the money can’t be spent on operational costs or tax cuts.
Eby told reporters the money will be divvied up among all 188 local governments — including municipalities and region districts — in B.C. based on population and growth, but did not provide additional details.
Details about the funding formula still weren’t available Monday from the Ministry of Municipal Affairs, a spokesperson from which answered The Herald’ questions with a general statement about the province’s rationale for the program and a pledge that local governments will be told their individual allotments in late March around the same time as the money starts flowing.
Rough calculations based solely on population suggest Penticton’s share of the fund would be worth in the range of $7 million or as much as $10 million if outlying areas are included, according to Mayor Julius Bloomfield.
“If we’ve got between $7 million and $10 million that could be spent here, it’s now about finding programs,” he said in an interview Monday.
“Fortunately, we’ve got motions that have already gone through council regarding affordable housing and workforce housing, which is not infrastructure, per se, but perhaps this money could be used for infrastructure upgrades to facilitate that affordable housing we are proposing in those motions.”
In hindsight, the most-prescient of those motions was passed in December and directed city staff to prepare an inventory of municipal lands that are suitable for affordable housing projects and rough costs to develop them.
Bloomfield, who described the relative speed at which the money is intended to roll out as “mindblowing, said the short window means there’s no time to waste putting the city’s best foot forward.
“It’s only projects in the development and planning stage that are going to be eligible, so it’s a question of getting those plans in front of the provincial government and getting an approval for our share of that money,” said the mayor.
“So, on that vein, we are formulating ideas and ways to lobby and advocate for projects in Penticton.”
Among the shovel-ready projects for which the city is awaiting funding is the final phase of the lake-to-lake bike route, which
Bloomfield said could “potentially” fit the new program’s requirements.
“The bike lane is one of many projects that could benefit from this program,” he added.
Summerland Mayor Doug Holmes described the fund as “very welcome news” and suggested it “also demonstrates the cross-government co-operation” that Municipal Affairs Minister Anne Kang discussed with him during a visit to Summerland in January.
Holmes hopes the funding formula will take into account each local government’s geographic size, as well as population and growth rate.
“Summerland has a lot of rural land that has to be serviced. Maintaining municipal infrastructure to agricultural land is disproportionately expensive compared to residential and commercial lands because of the distances between parcels,” explained Holmes in an email Monday.
“And at the same time, property taxes on agricultural land are a fraction of residential and commercial rates.”
As of November 2022, the B.C. government was forecasting a $5.7-billion surplus for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2023.
Provincial law requires that anything not spent by then be applied to debt repayment. Eby is skirting that rule by pushing the new $1-billion fund out the door before March 31.