Ask the mayor of Red Deer County and the reeve of Mountain View County what they hope to see come out of the upcoming provincial budget and they'll tell you the same thing.
The reintroduction of cash for the provincial local road bridge program.
“This is huge for Red Deer County,” said Red Deer County mayor Jim Wood, adding other counties would offer a similar hope. “We're talking millions and millions of dollars.”
In its 2013 budget, the province cut funding to the program, which assists the counties in covering the costs of constructing, upgrading and maintaining bridges and culverts.
Red Deer County has 175 bridges, the majority of which are made from wood, and four are scheduled for repair or replacement this year.
Wood said the county is currently assessing its “bridge deficit” and offered a guess that the money needed to carry out repair or replacement work on bridges older than 50 years in the county is in the “10s of millions.”
Mountain View County has roughly 260 bridges, which Reeve Bruce Beattie said is one of the highest bridge counts for any county in the province.
“It's certainly a program that we think is extremely important, obviously, for our infrastructure,” he said.
County representatives constantly bring up their wishes to the province for the program to again receive funding, Beattie added, and he's hopeful that since the Alberta government didn't axe the program altogether last year that there is hope funding could be restored.
“We've had some indications that it will be,” he said.
Wood and Beattie said another big item on their wish list ahead of the unveiling of the province's 2014-15 budget on March 6 is the continuation of, and hopefully an increase to, Municipal Sustainability Initiative (MSI) funding for the counties.
“The only promise that I'm hoping that is kept for sure is our MSI grant funding,” Wood said, adding receiving a healthy amount of MSI cash would help prevent any large tax increases in Red Deer County. “If we were to lose our MSI grant funding, we would be in a very serious problem because that grant money has allowed us to do a lot of our major infrastructure projects. Taxes alone would not be able to help with that.”
Cash from the MSI program is used to build, restore or maintain infrastructure projects such as roadways and storm systems.
Last year, Red Deer County received more than $5.6 million in MSI cash for capital projects and $442,000 in operating funding.
Beattie said MSI funding for the province should total roughly $1.4 billion right now but the actual number is closer to $900 million.
“We would like to see that ramped up to where it's supposed to be and we can chip in to the infrastructure deficit that we know exists within our county,” he said.
Other items Beattie would like to see addressed in the budget include the maintenance, or even expansion, of the flood response and mitigation programs, money for seniors housing maintenance in the county and money for the Sundre Hospital and Care Centre.
As for Wood, he wants the provincial government to pitch in for the replacement of Innisfail's Autumn Glen Lodge seniors facility, which is 54 years old.
“This is another area that we need help from the province in,” he said. “We've got to have a shared program.”
He'd also like to see the province make good on its pledge to build and pave Highway 791.
“We're not asking for all our projects but we would like to see that particular project be completed,” Wood said.
In the 2013 budget, the province set aside $15 billion over three years for infrastructure projects.
The province has forecast a healthier budget for 2014-15 compared to last year, partly in thanks to the increase in value of provincial oil exports due to the weakening dollar, but a deficit in this year's operating budget is expected along with an increasing capital debt.
"If we were to lose our MSI grant funding, we would be in a very serious problem because that grant money has allowed us to do a lot of our major infrastructure projects. Taxes alone would not be able to help with that."Red Deer County mayor Jim Wood
