The City and County of Grande Prairie have prepared lists of shovel ready projects for Province of Alberta. The government has asked municipalities to let them know what could move ahead right away if funding is allocated.
One of the biggest ticket items advanced by the County is the proposed flyover for Range Road 62 over Highway 43X, including a pedestrian and non-vehicle traffic crossing.
Reeve Leanne Beaupre says they approved a fairly substantial list as part of their 2020 budget deliberations earlier this month, including work on the 156 Avenue Storm Pond Drainage, and LaGlace water upgrades. She adds they updated the list with projects like the flyover in an effort to create bigger potential stimulus projects.
“These were just bigger picture, long term commitment projects that we know have to be done in the future but could be expedited should the province feel those were on their priority list as well.”
The City of Grande Prairie had also recently released its own list to the province, with a significant list of projects ranked and detailed by members of council.
“They ranged from things like new bridges in Muskoseepi North near the new hospital, to increase to the city overlay program, slope repair and rehab programs to building efficiency upgrades,” says Mayor Bill Given.
On April 9th, Premier Jason Kenney announced the province would be doubling the amount of funding available for capital infrastructure spending, for a total of $1.9 billion in 2020-2021.