The City of Portage la Prairie will be able to do a little more, thanks to additional funding from the province.
The Manitoba government announced recently that an additional $47 million would be added to municipal funding. The City of Portage la Prairie will receive $601,930.29, which is an increase of 46 per cent.
PortageOnline spoke with Mayor Sharilyn Knox following the February 27th City Council meeting and says this has been a long time coming.
“We're very thrilled. This funding has been frozen since 2016, and it's definitely affected all municipalities in Manitoba,” explains Knox. “We all know that costs have gone up, and when we tried to work with the same funding, we had to make some cuts in other places, so this is great news.
She adds that there’s no stipulations regarding how this money can be used, and this increased funding amount will be the baseline for the future. Knox says that the Association of Manitoba Municipalities (AMM) has been working hard to ensure that each municipality received the funding and support that they would need.
She also notes that one current city councillor had been fighting hard for this as part of the AMM before joining the council.
“Councillor Joe Masi was the executive director for the AMM for a long time,” mentions Knox. “I think he deserves a little bit of credit for the hard work he did back then, too. Even though he's in a different role, we know he did some great work.”
City Council’s next meeting will take place on March 13th.