Brighton council has supported a recommendation from its staff and has made a decision on how it will assist residents forced to deal with flooding in the spring.
Council will offer sand and sandbags free of charge to residents but will not be providing other equipment and labour to residents and businesses as it did last spring.
Staff had said that flood prevention work on private property by municipal employees and firefighters took too much time away from regular duties and strained the fire department’s ability to properly respond to serious situations.
Flooding cost the municipality almost $100,000 last year and it was estimated if high water this coming spring was as bad as last spring the cost to taxpayers could go up to $150,000.
Providing only sand and sandbags is estimated to cost around $30,000.
