Resolutions

Therefore be it resolved that the SUMA support the proposition that the availability of funding be the same for all communities regardless of size, and request the Municipal Rural Infrastructure Program and any future infrastructure programs make the amendments to allow for changes to be made so that all communities be eligible for the same amount of funding.

Response: All municipalities have an equal opportunity to apply for the Canada-Saskatchewan Municipal Rural Infrastructure Funding (MRIF) for their projects, in each application intake. The $1 million per project funding cap for cities and the $500,000 cap for all other municipalities was recommended by a SUMA representative on the MRIF Project Review Committee, to ensure that more municipalities could receive MRIF funding. SARM and the provincial and federal governments agreed to the proposal. It was also agreed that municipalities could split their projects into phases, so that they would have an opportunity to access MRIF funding for different phases of the same project, under each round of applications. City projects are usually larger and more costly than those in smaller municipalities. This is the justification for a larger cap for city projects. Without the caps, it is possible that only a small number of very large projects would be approved with the available funding.