The Mayor of Merritt, along with his contemporaries from Abbotsford and Princeton, have put out a joint call on Ottawa to reverse a decision on funding their respective disaster mitigation programs.

Mayor Mike Goetz, along with Abbotsford’s Ross Siemans and Princeton Mayor Spencer Coyne, say their respective applications have been rejected.

Goetz says Merritt’s most recent application was for 64 million dollars through the federal government’s Disaster Mitigation and Adaptation Fund.

He argues they don’t need all the money at once.

“We can’t do all the work in one year,” Goetz told the news conference in Abbotsford on Monday.  “I don’t know if a lot of you people are aware, but when we start work on the dikes, we only get 10 days out of the year to work on it, on a fish window. 10 days, that’s it. 10 days. So if you gave me 64 million dollars tomorrow, I couldn’t use it all in one go. This is a 4 to 7 year project.”

Goetz notes the 2021 atmospheric river event hit Merritt particularly hard.

“Give each community enough to get some work done to start protecting our citizens, because I will not sit quietly and wait for my citizens to have to be evacuated,” said Goetz.  “We were the only community in existence in BC that was completely evacuated at 3:30 in the morning.”

Goetz says he stands in unity with Abbotsford and Princeton in demanding a review of Ottawa’s decision to withhold funding.

“We have all gone through this. We have all suffered loss. The last thing we want to see is loss continue,” argued Goetz.  “So I request the federal government to rethink the applications, have a bit of a heart, and start helping our communities.”

A 2022 report put together by the City to try to secure DMAF funding estimates Merritt will need $165 million from higher level governments to upgrade the diking along the Coldwater River.

That river overflowed during the 2021 atmospheric river event, forcing the entire City of Merritt to be evacuated.