Mayor Fraser Tolmie was happy to see no surprises in the provincial budget released Wednesday.

He said it's important to have stability in the funding transferred from the province to the cities.

“We’ve had some conversations with the province through SUMA, as chair of the city mayor’s caucus, to ensure that revenue sharing was maintained and we’ve seen that,” Tolmie said.

The change in calculation revenue sharing gave the cities a bit more money this year in the previous budget cycle.

“There is a bump up and we’re pleased to see that.” Tolmie continued. “That creates a stability in our own budget process that we really haven’t had in a couple of years.”

Tolmie went on to say he is ‘extremely happy’ with that and he’ll continue to make sure it’s a focus.

Tolmie said one of the other highlights from the provincial budget is the new school coming to South Hill.

The province will be looking at land in the future, and the city will be part of the conversation with that.

“I know the school boards... have been talking with the province, so I guess this will be a conversation we’ll be having in the future to see what comes of it,” Tolmie said. “Again, the door is open for us to speak and we’ll make ourselves open to have that conversation.”

The conversation has started awhile back, Tolmie said, but had been put off a few times. The announcement is new, and even though the project didn’t make the list last year there were some preliminary discussions with the boards.

Now that the project is closer to the front burner, Tolmie said they will revisit some of those discussions and see what’s relevant now.

“The door is open and we’ll have conversations with the school boards and we’ll see what comes of it,” he said.