Westlock County has plans to spend $4.7 million on capital projects this year, with funding coming from a combination of grants, reserves and special levies. Council discussed and approved the 2015 Capital Budget at its Dec. 9 meeting, with the lion’s share of that money, $3.3 million going into Transportation Services. Roughly half the money in transportation services will be used for the brushing program ($1.5 million), with $300,000 coming from municipal coffers, $600,000 from provincial Municipal Sustainability Initiative (MSI) funding and the other $600,000 slated to come from a special levy. “In the long term, once this program is complete, it will then enable us to reduce the cost of the road maintenance,” CAO Peter Kelly said. “This could be up to a three-year program should council desire to do so.” Upgrades are planned for water services including new water valves and flushing hydrants for a total of $75,000, which will also be paid for by special levy. As for how, exactly, that special levy will work, Reeve Bud Massey said that’s still up in the air. The idea is to put a levy in place similar to what urban municipalities do with sidewalks — when a sidewalk is replace, the municipality issues a levy to cover the cost instead of raising taxes. Typically in a town or city, only the residents whose lots are adjacent to the sidewalk will pay the levy. When asked, Massey would not say if the brushing levy would only to landowners adjacent to the roads being brushed. “We’re working on the details of that,” he said. “We do not have specific answers today; it’s a concept today.” For more see this weeks print or e-edition or visit westlocknews
Posted on: Tue, 23 Dec 2014 22:47:10 +0000
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