The province has rejected the Town of Sackville’s entire funding request to cover COVID-19-related costs from a federal fund designed for that purpose.

The federal government allotted $41.1 million to local governments in New Brunswick, the province’s share of a $2-billion package announced back in July.

Most provinces opted to distribute funding on a per capita basis, immediately informing municipalities how much they would receive. In New Brunswick, local government minister Daniel Allain instead required local governments to do some paperwork.

Local governments were required to report the net impact of COVID-19 on their 2020 finances, and then have a resolution passed by their elected councils.

The request was light on details, says Sackville treasurer Michael Beal, but town staff went ahead and came up with a request of just under $291,000.

“We basically reviewed and spent a lot of time going through our books, our records and documenting a lot of this,” Beal told town council last night. “We did have savings that were non-COVID-related,” he said, which “would have happened either way.”

The province rejected the town’s claims, including:

• Payroll costs relating to COVID-19,
• Levee on the Lake costs, as a COVID-19 event,
• Costs relating to use of the arena as a Mount Allison welcome centre,
• And sewage treatment costs that were credited back to customers as a form of COVID-19 relief to ratepayers.

CAO Jamie Burke says Sackville is not the only municipality to experience frustration with how the province is administering the federal funding program.

“There’s certainly some other municipalities out there that are equally as frustrated as we are with the vagueness to the criteria of what we could submit,” said Burke last night. “This is a significant amount of work that the finance department and some of the other department heads who have contributed, have invested in this process.”