City to explore relief funding for businesses damaged by explosion

The City of Prince George will look at options for providing relief funding to businesses that were damaged by last week’s explosion.

At tonight’s (Monday) City Council meeting, Councillor Kyle Sampson said he spoke with several businesses in the area, as well as Downtown Prince George Executive Director Colleen Van Mook.

“They have a broken doors and windows grant that they often run anyways with vandalism in the downtown, but that funding is very specific to vandalism and it has a limited budget, and some of these businesses may have tapped out their total budget allowed under that program, so this would provide relief for some of these businesses that had this issue,” Sampson said.

“Something I’d be interested in exploring would be having staff return with a report to council in executing a partnership with Downtown Prince George to provide one-time relief, obviously we’re not going to be able to cover the full cost of all these damages, but if we could provide some sort of aid to the downtown businesses in a show of support, I think that would be the ideal situation.”

Sampson added that in his conversation with Van Mook, she estimated it could potentially be $20,000 if it was to match the same criteria as the broken windows and doors grant.

“I wouldn’t want to tie a hard number to it right now,” he said.

“Give staff the chance to work with Downtown Prince George and come back with a report at the next meeting, but potentially if we could consider up to $20,000 from the Council Contingency Fund to be explored on a program with Downtown Prince George for the support from this.”

Councillor Garth Frizzell suggested expanding that so they can look for other funding sources as well.

Director of Finance and IT Services Kris Dalio noted there’s approximately $34,000 left in the Council Contingency Fund for this year.

According to a release sent by the city this morning, damages are still being assessed.

The motion was carried unanimously.