The Municipality of Rhineland won't seek a share of the province's latest disaster financial assistance program.

The Manitoba government committed $12.5 million dollars in late January to help eligible applicants cover certain expenses incurred as a result of the Thanksgiving weekend snowstorm. It covers some of the cost of evacuation, municipal response, repairs to damaged infrastructure, and non-insurable damage to principal residences that are essential to the operation of eligible farms and buildings. The program applies to eligible homeowners, municipalities, farmers, and small business people.

After reviewing a list of expenses from that record-breaking snowstorm, Rhineland reeve, Don Wiebe, says Council felt the municipality didn't quite qualify for assistance.

"There really was no infrastructure damage and the repairs to our roads really weren't significant, so given our previous experience with DFA we did not make a claim," he explained.

"We spent a lot of time cleaning our roads and...we may have lost a lot of gravel on our roads, but that doesn't qualify for funding," added Wiebe. "There was very little to clean up from ditches because the snow melted. We did run the backhoe or grader in some ditches just to open up field drains for some people because of some of the crops that were still out there."

Most of the municipality's expenses as a result of the storm were related to plowing operations, administration and fuel costs.