Squamish will have an additional $40,000 to invest in public safety this year based on increased revenue from traffic fines, West Vancouver-Garibaldi MLA Joan McIntyre announced Tuesday.
Squamish will receive $286,287 from traffic fines this year, up from $245,993 last year.
Whistler’s traffic fine revenue, however, will increase by only $1,200. Whistler will receive $247,428 this year, compared to $246,228 last year.
“This funding will allow communities to make local decisions about where to enhance services to protect the public,” McIntyre said in a release.
Since expanding the Traffic Fine Revenue program in 2004 to give local governments 100 per cent of traffic fine revenue, the province has returned more than $2 million in additional funding to the communities of Squamish and Whistler alone.
The grant program assists municipalities that directly pay police enforcement costs. Provincial traffic fine revenue comes from ticket fines and court-imposed fines on violation tickets. The amount of money a municipality receives is based on its contribution to total municipal policing costs.
