Councillor Ray Prevost was bracing for the worst with provincial funding for phase 3 of the Bonnylodge project, but the news he got instead was completely out of left field.
“We had heard nothing but doom and gloom… about a week before when were told what could be cut to make this happen,” Prevost told council at Tuesday’s meeting.
Prevost and fellow councillor Lorna Storoschuk participated in a teleconference on January 11th expecting to severely lower their expectations for the project. Instead though, they found their funding had actually been increased from 10.4 million to 13.
That wasn’t the only good news. “The twenty percent we were supposed to pay back over the course of fourty years has been eliminated,” Prevost added. “We never had a contract or a letter saying we had to pay it back. It was really word of mouth from the previous Assistant Deputy Minister, so they’ve eliminated that twenty percent completely.
“I said ‘Can I get that in writing?’ They said ‘Well you never had a contract in writing so just don’t worry about it.”
The Seniors’ lodge will have 46 units when completed.