Mountain View County Deputy Reeve Patricia McKean says she is very pleased to hear that capital projects in the 2013 provincial budget include plans for improvements to the Highway 2 and Highway 27 intersection.
Although an exact timeline for work on the intersection was not released, the “Tentative Government-owned Transportation Projects 2013-2016” budget document includes “contract for 2013 construction” for the intersection.
“We now know that the Highway 2 and 27 intersection is now on the list of capital projects,” said McKean. “That is good news for us and we are very happy about that. It has been a concern for a long time. It's nice to see it is back on the list.”
MVC and the Town of Olds have been pushing for changes to the intersection for several years. MVC Reeve Bruce Beattie has called the intersection very dangerous.
McKean said she is also pleased that the 2013 provincial budget maintains funding to rural communities through the Municipal Sustainability Initiative.
The budget includes $2.5 billion in MSI funding. The county has financed road, bridge, water and wastewater, and other infrastructure projects with MSI funds.
“We are happy about that, but unfortunately our overall local bridge program has been zero funded and we have bridges in our county that are in desperate need of repair and replacement. So that's a concern to us,” she said.
“On bridges, I'm not sure if the idea is to leave them to deteriorate until we see what happens next budget, or if this is them telling us that it's now municipal responsibility. I'm not sure. We will be looking into that because it's part of our budget process as well. Do we need to be putting aside reserves? What do we need to do about this?”
Several other grants used by the county in the past have also been cut, she noted.
“The resource road grant has been zero funded. That is something we used in 2012 to do the Shell Burnt Timber road project,” she said. “Another one is the community airport grant has been zero funded and that was something we used to do repaving at the Olds-Didsbury and Sundre airports.”
The budget also includes $503 million over the next three years for 50 new schools and 70 modernizations with an expected total cost of over $2 billion.
McKean says she hopes some of that new school money makes its way to the Chinook's Edge School Division.
The budget does not mention any new funding to construct a new Sundre hospital, she noted.
“We were hoping that was coming, but just because there was no mention, we are just going to have to wait to find out more information about that,” she said.
There is no mention of money for a new Didsbury helipad.
“I don't anticipate anything coming for that,” she said.
The budget also includes the elimination of a portion of the Alberta Farm Fuel Benefit Program.
The tax exemption portion of the benefit, which allows farmers to buy gasoline and diesel marked with dye exempt from the nine cent per litre provincial tax, remains in place.
However the Alberta Farm Fuel Distribution Allowance, which further reduced the cost of fuel used by farmers by six cents per litre, has been eliminated.
“It is a concern because it helps make sure that our agricultural community is sustainable,” she said. “So it will affect individual farmers, which affects everybody.”
McKean says she personally is not pleased that the province has chosen to borrow to support this year's budget.
“I'm not sure that I agree with the option of borrowing and the effect it will have on future generations,” she said. “Only time will tell and it will also depend on the amortization period, which is so far unidentified.”
