Ottawa city council has approved a plan to have the city apply for provincial funding for repairs following the July 1 flooding, provided the total costs meet the required threshold. A motion moved at Wednesday’s city council meeting by Mayor Mark Sutcliffe and seconded by College Ward Coun. Laine Johnson calls for the city to apply for the Municipal Disaster Recovery Assistance program, which provides funding to help municipalities in Ontario with capital costs related to repairs for public infrastructure or property and operating costs to protect public health, safety or access to essential services that go above regular budgets. The motion says that the city is required to submit a resolution of council and an initial claim within 120 days of the disaster, which would be Oct. 29, in the case of the record storm on July 1. The costs must also meet or exceed a threshold of three per cent of the total taxes the city is eligible to collect to fund its own budget. The city is still compiling the costs, Sutcliffe said. Ottawa received more than 100 millimetres of rain on July 1, with some areas seeing significantly more. Thousands of households were flooded. The city launched extensive clean-up efforts, including multiple additional garbage pick-ups, and held numerous information sessions with affected residents on how best to apply for insurance claims. Several city properties were also affected, including Ben Franklin Place, two Ottawa Public Library branches, and the Meridian Theatres at Centrepointe. The theatre is expected to remain closed through the remainder of this year. The other properties have reopened, but both the Nepean Centrepointe and Carlingwood library branches have some areas that remain inaccessible. The future Moodie LRT station on the O-Train Line 1 West Extension was also damaged. Call to expand DRAO Another motion related to the Canada Day storm was moved by Coun. Theresa Kavanagh, seconded by Coun. Riley Brockington, which called on city staff to work with other municipalities in Ontario to encourage the provincial government to review the requirements for its Disaster Recovery Assistance for Ontarians (DRAO) program. Eligibility for the DRAO program is narrow and the province says applicants with insurance may only be eligible if their insurance coverage cannot cover the essentials. The program is meant to cover basic needs only. Sutcliffe has previously spoken about the relatively small payouts when compared to insurance coverage following previous disasters in the province. The Ontario government announced in July that residents near Graham Creek and Stillwater Creek could apply for the DRAO program, but many of the hardest hit areas were not included in the initial activation. To date, that area has not been expanded. “This motion asks the province to review the parameters for the DRAO program, not just for the storm of July 1, but for future extreme weather events across Ontario,” Kavanagh said. “With climate change bringing more frequent, severe weather events, including heavy rains that can lead to significant overland flooding, we need to ensure that supports are in place across all levels of government to help residents cope in the aftermath of storms.” The city requested an expansion of DRAO eligibility for flood-affected residents in the weeks following the storm, as the scope of the damage became more apparent. Provincial officials said at the time that the government was working with the City of Ottawa to identify other possible areas impacted by overland flooding where residents could be eligible to apply for the program. Both Kavanagh’s motion on DRAO and Sutcliffe’s motion on the Municipal Disaster Recovery Assistance program passed unanimously.
