Nearly $3.3M for Leeds-Grenville municipalities under Safe Restart Agreement

(Newswatch Group/Bill Kingston, File)

BROCKVILLE – The Leeds-Grenville, Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes area will get a combined total of nearly $3.3 million from the Ontario government’s Safe Restart Agreement funding.

Local MPP and Municipal Affairs Minister Steve Clark announced the money today ($3,278,000) which is meant to “offset operating costs for critical services” and help municipalities avoid an operating deficit heading into 2021.

Here’s what each municipality is getting:

  • Athens – $20,000
  • Augusta – $38,000
  • Brockville – $263,000
  • Edwardsburgh-Cardinal – $39,000
  • Elizabethtown-Kitley – $50,000
  • Front of Yonge – $19,000
  • Gananoque – $62,000
  • United Counties of Leeds-Grenville – $434,000
  • Leeds and Thousand Islands – $72,000
  • Merrickville-Wolford – $20,000
  • North Grenville – $87,000
  • Prescott – $53,000
  • Rideau Lakes – $93,000
  • Westport – $13,000

Gananoque also received $1,115,000 and North Grenville got $900,000 for applications they submitted. They were among 48 Ontario municipalities that demonstrated that they had been “hardest hit by COVID-19 and…demonstrated a need for additional assistance in covering their 2020 operating deficits.”

The Safe Restart Agreement is a $4 billion federal-provincial program that is providing emergency funding to municipalities.

This is the second rollout of money after the first allotment in August.