Chatham-Kent will have to wait a little while longer to learn the fate of its proposed new arena.
In late 2019, the municipality submitted an application to upper levels of government requesting $36.65 million through the Community, Culture, and Recreation Funding stream to go towards a 2,200 seat, $60 million arena.
In order to secure the money, the application must first be approved by the province, which will then pass it along to the federal government for final approval.
It was originally implied that Chatham-Kent would learn if they were approved by the provincial government sometime around February 2020. However, it was revealed during Monday night's council meeting that the municipality will have to wait five months longer to hear what the decision due to the large volume of applications the government has received.
"We received notice approximately two weeks ago that the provincial government had received $11 billion worth of requests for funding and they have approximately $1 billion to distribute. As a result of the oversubscription, we were told they were delaying the provincial considering for the applications until July 2020," said Don Shropshire, chief administrative officer.
Councillor Doug Sulman brought up the concern during the non-agenda portion of the meeting, noting that he has been getting several questions from residents about where the arena application process was. He also questioned if this meant the approval from the federal government would be pushed back as well.
According to Shropshire, if Chatham-Kent's funding application is approved by the provincial government, a final decision from the federal government would be expected around September 2020. He added that the timeframe was on par with what was originally anticipated for the federal portion of the approval.
"What we've been told by the provincial government is that the sequencing of the approval process will remain the same," explained Shropshire. "The provincial government is targeting July 2020 to consider the applications that have come from Ontario after which time they will indicate whether or not the application has been approved by the province. Those that have been approved will be forwarded to the federal government."
Shropshire said that the date pushback is the only update that the municipality has received so far regarding the process and it does not indicate that Chatham-Kent's application was approved or denied.
"We've shared... all of the information we have to date with respect to timing," said Shropshire. "We can make the commitment, if there are any future updates received from the province, we make the commitment to come back [to council]."
In May 2019, council approved contributing a maximum of $18.5 million of municipal funds towards the arena project. However, the construction of the project is only to move forward if the municipality can secure the $36.65 million in funding from upper levels of government. All funds contributed by Chatham-Kent will remain in municipal reserves until the provincial and federal governments finalize how to utilize the funding.
Following the discussion Monday night, Sulman requested that a report come back during July's council meeting with an update on the application.