Thank you, Mr. Chair. I’m having great difficulty with this motion. I support the concept of the New Deal and know that communities are happy to have their own autonomy and to use their funds as they see fit. I don’t know where the funding for this program would come from. I sense there’s a feeling on the part of the mover of the motion that there’s an unfairness here, that some communities got done and some did not.
Perhaps MACA could provide a bit of extra funding over the next several years to communities who are not done and earmark those funds only for a main street chipsealing program, in order to make it equal, so it wouldn’t be felt that the communities that got done while the program was in place got something and the other guys got nothing.
But you know, if this was intended to only apply to non-tax-based communities, I’m not from one of those so, for many reasons, I don’t feel I can vote on this motion, and I will abstain.