Minnedosa Council, MREC and Fundraising 2016
10/16/2016 at 2:38 PM
During a special meeting Minnedosa's Town Council On August 9, 2016,
http://minnedosa.allnetmeetings.com/pubs/publicMinutes.aspx?minutesID=530D5A90-ECC3-4691-8CA4-D6BCEC036244 a resolution was passed to apply for 3.1 million dollars in combined federal and provincial funding from the small communities fund administered by the provincial government for MREC.
https://www.gov.mb.ca/ia/single_window_intake.html The deadline for funding applications for 2016 was 17 days later on August 26, 2016 and must i:nclude a resolution by council in support of said application.
46.7 million,
https://www.gov.mb.ca/ia/pubs/general_information_reference_guide_non_municipal_applicant.pdf was allocated federally to Manitoba for the small communities fund over 10 years of which 10.2 million has yet to be allocated to individual projects for the 2016 and 2017 apllication years. The provincial government must allocate all funds to individual projects by April 1, 2018.
http://www.infrastructure.gc.ca/plan/nbcf-nfcc-eng.html The provincial government matches , by a provincial/ federal agreement or exceeds the federal contribution in each project. The federal component of the small communities fund over 10 years for rural Manitoba, everything but Winnipeg, Is less than a 100 dollars per person. One might optimistically expect a maximum combined federal/provincial funding amount of 200 to 300 dollars per person for a project. The 3.1 million applied for amounts to 1200 dollars per person for the 2600 residents of Minnedosa. Even if one liberally claims the Minnedosa Regional Events Centre will benefit an additional 2600 living outside of Minnedosa its still 600 dollars per person. The respective municipalities of the additional 2600 have historically contributed a third of the operational costs of the current arena and relatively little of the capital cost funds raised to date towards the future construction of MREC.
In my opinion the provincial government will deem MREC worthy of funding, but the funding levels of 3.1 million which Council is applying for will not be approved. About half that amount can be reasonably expected this year or next. On a positive note projects under the Small Communities Fund need to be completed by March 31, 2024. I can only hope that if council receives funding approval from the province in the near future that fundraising does not resume immediately. It would conflict with the far more important fundraising efforts of the Minnedosa primary care clinic,
http://www.minnedosaprimarycarecentre.com/
More bad news: The Husky plant has been contesting their tax assessment for a few years. The assessment has dropped from 24.1 million to 18.6 million from the 2016 to the 2017 assessment. That change will increase the tax burden for residential ratepayers. I've uploaded a screenshot: there's no way to link it.