WHEREAS infrastructure and green grant funding is made available to municipalities; AND WHEREAS through procedural delays associated with the approval of these funding opportunities, municipalities often face significant increases through inflation that cannot be included in the grant sharing formula: THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the Union of BC Municipalities lobby the Province to amend its infrastructure procedures to reduce delays or provide a mechanism by which inflationary costs can be included in the grant sharing formula.
Ministry of Community Services All infrastructure programs are extremely popular with local governments across the Province and grant requests far exceed available funding. Applicants are encouraged to include contingency amounts in their funding requests to ensure that they can deal with unanticipated changes in scope, uncontrollable cost increases and general inflation in the construction sector. Government acknowledges that during periods of rapid inflation in hot construction markets, final costs may still exceed budgeted and approved costs. However, within fixed funding envelopes for infrastructure programs, government endeavours to distribute funds to as many highly ranked local projects as possible and cannot increase grants to previously approved projects.