Windsor's mayor is confident that the province's new budget will help the city avoid further losses due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Mayor Drew Dilkens was not only encouraged by the regional acute-care hospital project receiving $9.8-million for planning, but also by the total $1-billion promised for Ontario's municipalities to compensate for revenue losses brought on by the pandemic.
Half of that billion dollars will go to Ontario's municipalities. Dilkens told Blackburn News Wednesday evening that although he doesn't know how much Windsor's share will be, the city avoided serious deficits and potentially painful service cuts thanks to past provincial help.
"The fact that there is a billion-dollar fund to help support municipalities gives us great hope that we will be able to submit, like we did in 2020, to the Ministry of Finance, our documents matched up to $19-million and to be made whole once again," said Dilkens.
That $19-million reflects the current budget deficit facing the city's pocketbook, though the mayor said that the figure is half the projected deficit revealed at the budget time this winter.
The provincial government has also promised $150-million to support municipal transit, which has suffered greatly since the pandemic was declared a year ago. Dilkens said Transit Windsor is not immune and will be helped immensely.
"Most of us are operating systems where ridership is down by about 80 to 90 per cent, and that's true for us here in the city of Windsor," said Dilkens. "So, you have a lot of empty buses or unfilled buses running throughout the city because the health unit's best advice today is still not to use transit if you don't have to."
An issue that hit close to home was the substantial increase in COVID-19 cases at Windsor's homeless shelters, particularly the Downtown Mission. The government has promised $255-million through its Social Services Relief Fund to help municipalities support shelters in that situation. Dilkens pointed out that the city previously provided the Mission with a million dollars through that fund.
"The fund is important, it's been used, and we intend on tapping into that fund moving forward, because we have a number of challenges, both with the hotel operation and obviously the Mission operation, along with outbreaks in other facilities as well," said Dilkens.
Highlights of the provincial budget, which is subject to legislative approval, can be found on Ontario's official website.
