The City of Dauphin has to figure out how to pay for already budgeted road projects after the province cut back on an important program.
The province is reducing the Manitoba Road Improvement Program which the city had expected to receive $225,000. In total Dauphin is getting $107,840 through the program for the Johnson Street Reconstruction project.
It was announced late in the construction season, on August 15th, that the province would be giving less than expected. The city had become accustomed to repairing major road projects with this fund for the past several years. There are also rumours that the MRIP grant will be eliminated altogether next year, although no formal announcement has been made yet. Dauphin had grown used to completing nearly one million dollars worth of infrastructure work annually, but without the MRIP grand, keeping the same level of spending in years to come is unsustainable.
They are now looking at using the surplus Gas Tax reserve to offset lost funds for the 2018 road projects. Some of the other projects included the work on Jackson Street.
Dauphin isn’t the only community in Manitoba that is dealing with cuts as many other communities are dealing with the same problem.
The Association of Manitoba Municipalities is planning to lobby the provincial government to keep the funding at the previous allocation and keep it separate from the federal Investing in Canada Infrastructure Program.
