Saskatchewan is using some of the truckloads of cash coming in from the booming oil sector to bolster municipal roads servicing the industry.
Premier Lorne Calvert recently announced $5 million in funding for rural municipalities in the Lloydminster area to help offset rising road maintenance costs due to high volumes of truck traffic in that heavy oil region.
“With this funding we will help rural municipalities sustain and improve the infrastructure needed to take advantage of emerging economic opportunities that will bring them growth and prosperity,” Calvert said.
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The province is also benefiting from those opportunities. The oil sector has delivered $218 million more than budgeted into provincial coffers, according to Saskatchewan’s 2006-07 third quarter financial report.
But all that prosperity is taking a heavy toll on rural roads.
During his March 14 address to 1,700 delegates attending the Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities convention in Saskatoon, Calvert said RMs in the Lloydminster area deserve special attention because they are spending five to 10 times more than their counterparts on road maintenance.
Another $5 million will be available for a municipal primary weight corridor program, an expenditure that will be bumped up to $10 million in 2008.
Calvert didn’t stop there. He whet the appetites of SARM delegates about what else might be contained in the March 22 provincial budget.
“I’m happy to be able to tell you this morning there will be new resources in the provincial budget for revenue sharing,” he said.
He wouldn’t divulge how much new revenue sharing money would be heading to RMs because it depended on what kind of equalization deal Ottawa unveiled in its March 19 federal budget.
SARM president David Marit thanked Calvert for the new money.
“It’s close to what we’re asking for,” he said.
SARM had requested $10 million for resource road maintenance, $10 million to implement a new primary weight corridor, $4 million in a revenue sharing top- up and $1.5 million for bridge maintenance.
Marit is particularly concerned about the shortfall in funding to establish a strategic corridor system on municipal roads that can accommodate primary weight traffic.
“We had anticipated $10 million this year, which would have provided enough funds to cover our projected increases in maintenance costs and some money for construction,” he said.
“At $5 million we are unable to meet even the maintenance commitment. Unless more money can be found the future of this program is in jeopardy.”
Calvert also used his speech at the SARM convention to lambaste the Conservatives for softening on their election promise of fully excluding Saskatchewan’s nonrenewable natural resources from the equalization formula.
“It has gone from being a promise to a preference,” he said.
If the Conservatives lived up to their promise it would amount to an $800 million annual influx for the province. Calvert has promised 30 percent of that federal money would be applied to lowering the education portion of property tax, a $400 savings for every taxpayer in the province.
He told delegates he will be watching the federal budget closely to see if the Conservatives break their promise.
Marit doesn’t appreciate municipal revenue sharing dollars being tied up in a political dispute between Regina and Ottawa.
“That kind of bothers me a little bit,” he said.
He noted that the province is sitting on a fiscal stabilization fund of $887 million and a 2006-07 budget surplus of $102 million.
“We didn’t ask for a whole lot of that money.”
