KENORA – Tuesday’s regular council meeting was the last meeting before the council goes into its lame duck period during the municipal election. Therefore, the council needed to pass a motion to move $100,000 from the Insurance Deductible Reserves to cover the deductible for the damage the city endured during the spring flood.
Such damage also includes the Coney Island Footbridge which detached from its base. A $225,000 plus HST will be moved from the contingency reserves for the emergency cost to replace the Coney Island Footbridge. The extent of the damage to the Coney Island Footbridge was significant enough to warrant a full replacement.
According to CAO, Kyle Attanasio, “to date, the City has incurred in excess of $650,000 in additional costs directly attributable to the flood based on existing invoices received.”
However, the total cost of flood damage is still unknown due to certain areas of the city being underwater.
At this point, the City of Kenora is mitigating the costs of flood damage that were not included in the 2022 budget.
Council also appointed Ryan Marsh, the new director of Finance, to oversee the request to the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing to activate the Municipal Disaster Recovery Assistance program.
However, damages to the city incur a threshold amount is $775,348. Once this level is reached 75 per cent of the costs are covered by the program.
“We do anticipate exceeding this threshold based on the information we have today,” said Attanasio. “As the City gets closer to submitting its claim, we will have a better idea of both the final costs incurred from the flooding and the final number requested from the Disaster Relief Program.”
