Burlington receives $2M from province for ice storm cleanup

Insidehalton.com
Jan. 4, 2016
By Michael Gregory

Burlington is receiving just over $2 million from the province to cover some of the costs from the ice storm that battered southern Ontario two years ago.

A total of $131M in financial assistance was provided to regional governments, municipalities and conservation authorities.

The city’s initial claim was for $3.33M but later revised after the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing decided some incremental road maintenance costs wouldn't be covered.

Burlington subsequently removed those costs totalling around $1.2M and received $2,070,409 in the end.

The city’s manager of financial services, Sandy O’Reilly, said that originally a broad timeline to incremental costs was applied.

“As we came to have a clearer understanding of what would be considered allowable incremental costs and the proof required, we narrowed the timeline for which we claimed them and thus were successful in having them approved,” she said.

In February 2014, the province announced it would cover close to 100 per cent of response and recovery costs through the Ice Storm Assistance Program.

“In order to be eligible under the program, costs need to be incremental to regular budgets, directly linked to the ice storm and for emergency response or recovery activities,” said ministry spokesperson Praveen Senthinathan in an email.

“The City of Burlington's claim included costs that did not meet program guidelines.”

A total of $2,251,137 from the city’s reserves was used to cover the costs of all the winter control activities in 2013 and 2014.

O’Reilly said ice storm funding from the province was used to replenish that fund.

Neighbouring Hamilton also only received 50 per cent, or $2.1M, of its original claim of $4.1M submitted to the province.

By comparison, Oakville was given just over $6M, or about 117 per cent of its claim.

Halton Region was handed $2.8M, while $118,113 was given to Conservation Halton.

Burlington MPP Eleanor McMahon applauded the work of local governments that responded “swiftly” by cleaning up debris and establishing warming shelters in the aftermath of the storm.

“While the need to better prepare for increasingly-common extreme weather events is apparent, this one-time disaster relief program will alleviate the financial impact of this storm on our region,” she said.

The weather event on Dec. 21, 2013 caused power outages for 7,500 Burlington Hydro customers, as well as significant damage throughout rural and urban parts of the city and Halton.