After the city cut $7.2 million dollars from this year’s budget due to the COVID-19 pandemic, one business leader is feeling good about the future.

Kamloops Central Business Improvement Association executive director, Carl DeSantis was on the NL Morning News, and had praise for how city council is dealing with the pandemic looking forward.

“I am confident. When you look at the leadership the city has shown and Kathy Humphrey and the Mayor and everybody else, they are absolutely determined to do what is best for Kamloops and a lot of the decisions, I’m sure, were still respecting the downtown plan that Kamloops council had just approved and so much work went into.

“I think we can say there’s a light at the end of the tunnel”

DeSantis says he’s confident most projects will get done, in time.

“Some, we’re not going to see for a while, and it absolutely pains me and the majority of our community. When you talk about the Centre for the Arts, which wasn’t part of that cut but you certainly know what happened with the referendum.”

He’s happy to see at least one downtown initiative left out of the cuts. “Initially, I was concerned about the Fourth Avenue plaza proposal,” he says.

“You may recall we shut down Fourth Avenue with the city a few years ago as a pilot project. I was concerned it would get shelved. However I didn’t see any reference to the forth avenue plaza.”

DeSantis says there were some pains in what he heard from council but he conceded tough times call for tough decisions.

Meanwhile, the Kamloops Chamber of Commerce executive director, Acacia Pangilinan, is pleased with the decisions made by council this week.

“We need to keep our economy going, and if we have the capability of doing things in a safe way that doesn’t endanger anyone, then we should be looking at those opportunities to keep the economy going. So, pretty happy about that.”

The Chamber wrote a letter to the city earlier last week, encouraging projects to go ahead wherever possible. There were nearly 30 budget items this week that were deferred until next year, but major upgrades to roads and facilities are continuing.

– with files from Colton Davies