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One-third of city budget devoted to roads

BY TRACEY DUGUAY [email protected] City council approved a $61 million capital budget Monday night following a five-hour finance committee meeting. ?I believe it?s a good capital budget,? said city CAO Mark Mieto.
BY TRACEY DUGUAY

City council approved a $61 million capital budget Monday night following a five-hour finance committee meeting.

?I believe it?s a good capital budget,? said city CAO Mark Mieto. ?It invests some very critical dollars in our infrastructure.?

Nearly a third of the money ($19.5 million) will be devoted to roads, which combined with federal and provincial infrastructure funding ($4.2 million), and a portion of federal gas tax revenues ($1.5 million), brings the total spending to just over $25 million for 2006.

Another large chunk of the funds will be put towards water ($8.1 million) and wastewater ($7.9 million) infrastructure projects, $2.3 million for upgrades to leisure and recreational facilities and $1.5 million for economic development initiatives.

?The new money from the federal and provincial governments and the new municipal capital levy has allowed us to significantly increase our investment in municipal infrastructure,? said finance committee chair Eldon Gainer in press release. ?The City of Greater Sudbury is now catching up on the backlog in road repairs and making tangible changes on major infrastructure initiatives.?

Council also voted on how to spend an additional $3 million, made possible by the federal gas tax, which allowed them to commit to high priority strategic projects that were previously not funded through the capital budget.

While the federal gas tax must be used only to address ?environmentally sustainable municipal infrastructure projects,? the city was able to reallocate funds so that some projects previously covered under capital spending were now covered by the gas tax, thereby freeing the money to be used on other high priority projects.

However, with only $3 million was available to be spent, and the list of unfunded priority projects totaling close to $11 million, council had a tough decision determining which projects would receive funding.

In the end, council voted to spend the funds on city playgrounds ($750,000), fire services equipment ($525,000), community centers and recreational facilities ($425,000), the Civic Memorial Mausoleum ? Phase 3 (550,000), the Community Image Project ($250,000), the Laurentian University track ($250,000), the mysudbury.ca portal ($150,000), Bell Park upgrades ($68,710) and complete accessibility work at Tom Davies Square ($31,290).

While the $61 million in spending shows a large investment in local infrastructure projects and initiatives, an increase of nearly $27 million over a three-year period, there?s still a $50 million gap in the all the capital projects that need to be addressed and the funding available.

?Our capital wasn?t addressed for nearly a decade,? said Mieto.

According to the city?s capital financing plan, by 2015, the city?s cumulative capital financing gap may grow to $417 million. This amount could be offset by the continued implementation of the capital levy (approximately $182 million from 2007 to 2015) and the federal gas tax ($25 million from 2006 to 2010), but that would only bring the gap down to $209 million.

?This (capital levy and gas tax) will address approximately half the gap,? said Lorella Hayes, chief financial officer and treasurer for the city.

Those in charge of running the city over the next decade will undoubtedly have their work cut out for them finding new sources of revenue and funding to address this growing problem.

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