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By STEPHEN LLEWELLYN
llewellyn.stephen@dailygleaner.com

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Fredericton is getting $5.8 million for an unconditional grant for 2010, which is the same as last year.

But city hall and all the other municipalities in the province will have a wait a few more weeks to find out what their tax base will be next year.

The provincial government announced Friday that it's maintaining the provincial unconditional grant pool at $68 million.

Fredericton Mayor Brad Woodside said he was pleased that province didn't cut the unconditional grant.

"We had been waiting for the news," he said Friday. "It is not less than we were getting last year and I would have to say that is not bad news for us."

Woodside said city council was concerned that the unconditional grant would be cut because the province is forecasting a big deficit this year.

"That would have been somewhat of a hardship for municipalities," he said.

Fredericton is getting less than half of the unconditional grant that is going to Saint John and almost a quarter the amount that Moncton will receive.

Saint John's unconditional grant is $11.6 million, and Moncton's unconditional grant is $19.5 million.

Woodside said the difference is still a sore spot for the capital in terms of fairness and equity.

"We have been fighting that battle for quite some time," he said. "But I don't think we could ask for much more than stability in funding this year.

"Government is going through a tough (financial) time right now."

Local Government Minister Bernard LeBlanc said Friday that when the pre-budget tour was done earlier this year, many municipalities requested that the unconditional grant stay the same.

"This is what we are doing," he said. "Municipalities create a lot of jobs and make everything go.

"We want to support them."

LeBlanc also said the unconditional grant figure is being released early this year.

"This is the earliest that it was ever done," he said.

That was another request from the municipalities to help them prepare their budgets, said LeBlanc.

He denied the suggestion that the information was being released early to distract the public from the controversial proposed sale of NB Power to Hydro-Quebec.

This year is also the first time that a city council has to hold a vote in open session on whether to take the full assessment above the rate of inflation and new construction.

But LeBlanc said municipalities will have to wait until the end of November for the assessment figure that will tell them the size of their tax base.

The idea of making municipal council's vote for their full assessment is to make municipal government more transparent, he said.

"We want to make sure that people know where their dollars are being spent," he said.

LeBlanc said he doesn't know how municipalities will vote on the assessment.

"Each is separate," he said.

Woodside said he doesn't know what will happen on that assessment vote.

"We have talked about a lot of different things," he said. "I think what we are going to have to do is cross that bridge when we get to it."

Woodside said it will depend what the final assessment figure turns out to be.

In the province's last budget, it called on cities and universities to implement a wage freeze.

But Woodside said that isn't happening in Fredericton.

The mayor said it might take until after Christmas to finalize the city budget because they don't have the assessment number yet.

"We are trying to deal with the budget without having figures," he said.