$2.8 million in unused funds will be returned to their respective rural electoral areas by the Peace River Regional District in the hopes of funding future improvements in the communities.
During their meeting, the regional district’s rural budgets administration committee voted in favour of “the return of unused grant commitments from the Community Works Gas Tax, Fair Share, and Peace River Agreement to their respective funding sources” to all four of the electoral areas under their jurisdiction.
Electoral area B will receive $1.2 million with this redistribution- a large portion stems from a cancelled $500,000 project and a decade-old rural gasification effort that came in $637,632 under budget.
Area C, which includes the city of Fort St John, will receive $300,500 for an under-budget completed project and an abandoned project.
All the projects in electoral area D were completed, and communities will see $694,098 redistributed by the regional district.
The final electoral area covered by the regional district, area E, will see $619,217 –$500,000 of which came from an abandoned gas expansion project.
Notably, electoral areas C and E will see the lowest amount of redistributed cash when omitting abandoned projects. This is because neither had the rural gasification projects. In areas B and D these projects came in hundreds of thousands under-budget.
The committee also authorized the repurposing of funds already included in the rural areas’ budgets, outside of the redistributed money. Electoral area D, which includes Dawson Creek and Pouce Coupe, will use $25,000 of their Peace River Agreement funds to cover fire protection costs – versus the original plan for the area to use their fair share funding. It will also receive $250,000 “for the purpose of funding the Pouce Coupe Fire Hall Expansion,” according to regional district staff.
Staff said by returning the unused cash and rerouting the flow of funds in some ongoing projects, the committee is enabling development and funding improvements.
