The Mayor of Kamloops says the big asks from the city in the provincial budget haven’t been included.

Ken Christian says he and city staff have had a chance to comb through the budget this week, and says there are omissions.

“In particular, we were hoping for a new infrastructure grant program that would help us offset the taxpayers cost for replacing and repairing a lot of infrastructure in the city. The other thing we were looking was the distribution of tax revenue for the sale of regular cannabis.”

Christian had also brought up the concern of funding for infrastructure at the federal level, directly to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and more recently to Infrastructure Minister Francois Philippe-Champagne. Specifically, the request was to help fund upgrades needed due to climate change like to storm sewers.

“There are a number of programs that come and go, but from my perspective it’s one way to assist municipalities to get a lot of the much needed repairs on existing infrastructure done. And it’s also a way to kick start the economy in terms of contractors and trades people who perform this kind of work.”

As for cannabis sales tax revenues, the feds will keep 25 per cent and provincial and municipal governments to split the other 75 per cent. How that will be split is still unclear, and municipalities have been waiting for months for a decision from the province.

“From my view, a 50-50 split of that 75 per cent, or in other words 37-and-a-half per cent for local government, would be a reasonable way to offset the very real costs that our taxpayers are incurring in support of the recreational marijuana and decriminalization.”

Christian says he’s still hopeful some sort of infrastructure grants will come forward, and says hopefully there will be a retroactive cheque involved when it comes to cannabis sales tax revenues.