York Region receives provincial grant for public transit capital
By Jon Yaneff

York Region received a letter from the Minister of Transportation March 3, indicating they would be receiving a grant of $7,852,638 for public transit capital.

This is not from Ontario's budget, but from their economic update statement from mid- December.

"There's conditions for the grant," said Commissioner of Finance Lloyd Russell, in a presentation to Regional council March 27. "It must be used for transit capital only, it's subject to reporting and audit and if it's not appropriately used it will be deducted from future gas tax payments."

"When we received that notification, the chair (Bill Fisch) asked if there was a way that this announcement could benefit the 2008 operating budget and since the grant itself is only for capital funding we went back to look how it could benefit operating," he added. "We saw to provide some benefit to take the funds from the new announcement and replace existing funding within the transit capital budget. So, we would replace the funding of province gas tax, as we have for several projects in the budget and also eliminate some tax support debt."

This results in reduced provincial gas tax funding within the capital budget of $5.3 million and a reduced tax supported debt of $2.5 million.

The Region also has to use the available provincial gas tax to fund increased transit operating costs, which are eligible for provincial gas tax.

"If the full $5.3 million is used for operating costs, the tax increase impact can be reduced by 0.8 per cent," said Russell.

Russell explained they are currently looking at 3.2 per cent tax increase with a base budget and factoring in such things as growth, assessment growth, enhancements and phasing out of GTA pooling.

King Mayor Margaret Black said the grant is extraordinary for York Region.

"We are grateful for the provincial government giving us the money," she said.

"The indication we have gotten was we'd be eligible for something in the $4-to- $5 million range for roads at the regional level and that allocation is based on a mix of population and lane kilometres," explained Russell. "It's 30 per cent population and 70 per cent lane kilometres and it should result in a greater allocation to the more rural parts of the province."