In the second last day of operating budget deliberations, City Manager Craig Curtis shared some bad news with council around the June wind storm.

Curtis informed councillors that after the City applied to the Provincial Disaster Recovery Program, they were denied.

Red Deer had applied to the Provincial Disaster Recovery Program to which they were denied, and had applied for around $2 million for provincial reimbursement following the storm.

“I was fairly optimistic because I know last week Grande Prairie had received their funding,” said Curtis.

The City has already spent money, absorbing the expenditures from the storm, and as a result $2 million less will be transferred into their operating reserve in 2017.

The province’s response for rejecting assistance was that they believed the storm didn’t warrant disaster recovery. Curtis added that the province said the disaster didn’t threaten the economic viability of people, businesses and the municipality, and that the cause of it wasn’t extraordinary.

The storm saw winds clocked up to 111 kilometers, leaving 15,000 properties without power.

“We’re checking our insurance policies to see which we may recover through insurance,” said Curtis.

Budget deliberations continue today.