Chatham-Kent is getting the piece of a pie from the government's recent funding towards Ontario's small and rural municipalities.
The one-time investment was announced on March 20 by Steve Clark, minister of municipal affairs and housing.
CK was one of 405 rural municipalities to receive the funding. The intent is to support municipalities that may have limited capacity to plan, modernize and improve the way they provide services to their communities.
“A mixture of size and specific needs go into the allocation process. Chatham-Kent will receive $725,000 with Leamington at $620,201 and Pelee Township getting $234,800,” said Rick Nicholls, MPP. He added that Chatham-Kent’s investment is the highest available under the directive.
The municipality's chief financial officer and treasurer, Mike Turner, said the funding was a pleasant surprise.
"Never a bad surprise, but it was a surprise that we got it," Turner said. "It's one-time funding but the province is doing reviews of all of their different programs and this is something they felt would help in certain areas of service delivery."
Although Turner said it's too early to tell what exactly the money will go towards, he said the intent is to review certain services in the municipality and see how their efficiencies could be improved. "Can we do something through transportation that could help improve those services? Make them more efficient, provide better cross-community coverage on something like that," said Turner. "Can we do something in the fibre builds across the community to help support high-speed internet? That's the kind of things we're thinking about."
According to Turner, the next step will be to brainstorm what the money can go towards and then bring a report to council.