A Sarnia councillor is hoping to capitalize on having an inside track on $48-billion worth of infrastructure funding promised by the Trudeau government.
"There's a magic number that smaller municipalities like ourselves, under 100,000, are deemed for," says Federation of Canadian Municipalities Infrastructure and Transportation Committee Vice Chair Anne Marie Gillis.
"It's called the small communities fund and we are eligible for that funding and that's the funding that I'm going to make sure that we have the opportunity to get. Not just our community, but all of the communities within Lambton County."
In Sarnia, 25% of the city's streets are in a state of failure and it would take a double-digit property tax increase to fix them.
Gillis says the city has spent $30-million on infrastructure since 2006, but in the past few years almost the entire road repair budget has been allocated to specific major projects.
She adds with just a .75% increase in property assessment and the city running a deficit, there's no money for the repair of smaller residential streets.
