Vancouver city council expects infrastructure projects, such as the new Van Dusen Gardens visitors’ centre and a police property and forensic storage faciltiy, to be complete by October and will not ask the federal government for extra funding after that, according to a vote at council on Monday.
The vote was a formality but it also signalled that the projects do not have to be complete by the March deadline originally conceived.
Ottawa announced last year that municipalities would only get stimulus spending for infrastructure projects if they spent the cash by March 2011. That date was later revised until October 2011.
“What the federal government did was ask local governments to pass resolutions saying that if the projects were not finished by the end of October, that local governments would be on the hook for any outstanding balance or any funding beyond that,” said city spokeswoman Wendy Stewart.
“What council did was come together today to do that.”