More projects to benefit from casino hosting revenues
City receives $26.3 million in past fiscal year
Niagara Falls city council has allocated the last of the money it received in casino-hosting revenue for the most recent fiscal year to more than a dozen projects.
City finance director Todd Harrison made a presentation to council Tuesday evening outlining the final allocation of 2017-18 revenues the municipality received from Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corp. for hosting two casinos.
During this past fiscal year, Niagara Falls received $26.3 million in casino-hosting funds — OLG made its fourth and final quarterly payment of the fiscal year in April.
Prior to Tuesday’s meeting, council had already allocated $24.7 million, the three largest sums being $12.9 million toward projects in the 2018 budget, $5.9 million to offset property taxes and $4.2 million toward an agreement with Niagara Regional Police for its casino unit.
Staff said during its year-end reconciliations for other sources of funding, including federal gas tax and Ontario Community Infrastructure Funds, it was identified an additional $984,591 was available.
That leaves about $2.5 million available for other capital expenditures.
On Tuesday, council approved staff’s recommendation to allocate the available funds toward projects in various departments, including parks improvements (such as land acquisition of Ker Park and basketball/tennis court improvements in other parks); recreation and culture enhancements; equipment replacement for the fire department; road and sidewalk work (such as rehabilitations of Culp Street and Dorchester Road); and traffic-calming measures.
In the past, council established priorities for where it wanted to see the funds allocated, including capital asset reinvestment; tax levy reduction; regional policing casino unit; economic development initiatives; and new hospital reserve.
Harrison said 54.8 per cent of casino-hosting funding is allocated toward capital projects; 22.5 per cent to offset taxes; 15.9 per cent toward policing the casino unit; 4.6 per cent toward economic development; and two per cent to a reserve in support of a new hospital.
He said the annual revenues from
the OLG agreement increased in 2017-18 to $26.3 million from $24.5 million in 2016-17.
Funding has been allocated this year in a similar fashion as prior years, said Harrison, and is consistent with the direction council established after the current funding agreement with the OLG was put in place in 2013.
He said new this year, staff were able to use other sources of funding to ensure more priority projects are started.
Harrison said senior staff in various departments were asked to come forward with priority one projects that were not included for funding in the 2018 budget.
Council still has about $43.6 million worth of unfunded priority one capital projects, the largest being $5.4 million for a new fire station to serve the growing southwest end of the city.
Harrison said there is a “backlog” of infrastructure projects in the city.