City Councillor Faron Nicholls' portfolio primarily includes waterworks in Portage la Prairie. He says the new budget facilitates a new staff member for facility maintenance. 

Nicholls adds design costs for the water treatment plant that's being completely upgraded for the current part of design work is just under $3-million split, putting the city's part at $1.3 million, with the province taking the remaining cost. The entire cost for the complete upgrade will come to just under $80 million.

"It's going to support our economic investment for development," says Nicholls. "It's not only what we have going on now in terms of infrastructure investment, but down the road for growth. This is the first part of our investment into it and the design piece is the first chunk. So, we'll get that off the ground and done in its entirety, in terms of design. And then we'll be ready to go to tender."

He notes this brings them to about the halfway mark through the design phase.  

"This administration has done a wonderful job in putting together this budget. It will all be supporting a very fair and equitable budget going forward and once again, supporting our strategic direction here in the city." 

Nicholls says they've been working with chemicals and services provided for the services they do with the water treatment plant and the pollution control plant, and they've been facing increasing costs of services and chemicals over the last years.  That's all been part of the budget, as well.