Ponoka has received motions of support from Lacombe, Stettler and Rimbey so far in their fight against the provincial and federal government grant funding program after they were repeatedly passed over for grants to build their new field house.

Mayor Rick Bonnett says their citizens have been pushing for a new field house since 2005, and they were overlooked in the grant cycle in 2008 and again in 2012, because the province told the town they weren't, "shovel ready".

“Well we spent the dollars and we got ourselves in position to be shovel ready for the next granting cycle, and in 2015 when the federal government announced the Infrastructure Canada Building Fund, we had details prepared, we’ve done everything that’s been asked of both the federal and provincial government to get ready, and now they are telling us that they’re not going to give us any extra funding.”

Bonnett says the province changed the rules last year, and they now want the town to use their Municipal Sustainability Initiative money, which is a portion of the education tax given back too municipalities for essential services such as roads, sewers, and infrastructure. 

“We feel that if we use that portion of our granting funding, our regular granting funding, for an extra grant that is supposed to be over and above normal grant funding, like the big cities get extra things for other facilities and so on that are always extra over and above, but with the smaller communities they want us to just use our regular funding as the governments portion and we think that unfair, and not really a smart or wise move on smaller communities to take that out of their essential services to fund a big field house like this. It’s a one-time project that should have extra government funding go with it.”

He feels there a major discrepancy in the way grants are given to big cities compared to smaller municipalities, and that's why he asking communities of similar size in Alberta for their support.

Ponoka council made a motion in November to withhold the education portion of their property taxes to the province.

The province responded to that motion earlier in January by saying they will not give Ponoka another grant until that motion is rescinded, and said they may take further action against the town if the first payment isn't received by the end of March due date.