The City of Winkler will receive over $1 - million from nearly $40 - million the Province of Manitoba recently divided among all municipalities outside of Winnipeg.
    
The $39.9 - million distributed on a per capita basis, is the remaining money from the overall $70.6 million Strategic Infrastructure Basket available to municipalities outside of our capital city.

"It was actually really good news to get," said Winkler Mayor Henry Siemens. "We were pleased to see that the province made the announcement last week Thursday, specifically stating that they had a per capita investment to all municipalities outside of the City of Winnipeg. At that time we did some quick back-of-napkin math that led us to believe that we would be somewhere in the vicinity of where we ended up, and happy to see the confirmation letter show up that states that we will be receiving $1.053 million"

Siemens noted these funds are not tied to anything, therefore the city can use them to invest in local priorities, whether it's existing projects already underway, to start new projects, or to help mitigate the ongoing high levels of inflation.

As for how Council will use the unexpected injection of funds, Siemens says with the news still so fresh, they're still at the starting point of figuring that out.

"We're just starting our budgeting process for next year and as we go through that, taking a look at what our priorities are, what are some of the things that we've been putting off because of these higher level costs, what can we now do? So it's a little bit early to say where that is other than to be extremely thankful and appreciative about it. And knowing that this will help put some projects back on track so that we'd be able to continue to move them forward without going back to our local taxpayer, looking for more money to be able to do projects that we really need and really want." 

On top of the $1.053 million, Siemens says there's also an additional $44.5 million that will be available on an application basis through a new Municipal Economic Development Infrastructure Program, where applications will need to flow in. 
    
This money is also only available to municipalities outside of Winnipeg.

"Again, it's a significant contribution towards these strategic infrastructure projects that each one of us needs to do. So right now that process has already started with our staff. What kinds of things would we like to see? What kinds of things have we been postponing because of cost or increased costs that we can maybe put back onto the table to get an actual approval on, and then be able to move forward? It's a fairly quick process here as well. 

The application deadline for the new Municipal Economic Development Infrastructure Grant Program is October 6th.

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