Duane Hicks
Fort Frances got a shot-in-the-arm from the Infrastructure Stimulus Fund with money to help pay for the water and sanitary sewer portion of the reconstruction work going on at Nelson Street, Portage Avenue, and Victoria Avenue (commonly referred to as the biomass roads project).
The federal and provincial governments each will pay $571,365—for a total of $1,114,730—towards the $1,714,095 project.
The town will pay the remaining one-third of the project cost.
“It’s very good news for the Town of Fort Frances,” said Mayor Roy Avis, adding the town had built that project into the 2009 budget, meaning the new funding will free up some of the previously budgeted money to do another project or benefit future budgets.
“I think we have to thank the senior levels of government,” he added. “Even though it’s a third, a third, a third, when you’re running infrastructure programs like this, if you can jump on board, it’s a real asset because you save the taxpayers money in the long-run.”
“It’s a good thing,” Fort Frances CAO Mark McCaig said of the funding. “I am pretty excited about it.”
