Flood defences £25m investment to protect homes
The flagship North Portsea Coastal Scheme in Hampshire covers 5.2 miles (8.4km) of coastline from Tipner through to Milton.
It will receive £13.8 million Environment Agency (EA) funding to protect more than 4,000 properties and 500 businesses.
More than £12m has been awarded to flood defences from Poole Bridge to Hunger Hill in Dorset.
Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole (BCP) Council said the scheme reduce the risk of tidal flooding to more than 2,000 properties in and around Poole town centre "over the next 100 years".
Councillor Andy Hadley said: "The project will also support redevelopment of the Poole West Quays, including a continuous public quayside, and this funding is a welcome boost towards delivering that vision."
The Portsea scheme has been underway since 2015 and is due to finish in 2026.
In a statement, a spokesperson for the £85.9m project said the money "gives us an exciting opportunity to ensure this vital sea defence project leaves behind a green legacy".
In February, more than £2.5bn of government funding was committed to flood protection schemes across England.
The Environment Agency (EA) says the funding for both new and pre-existing schemes will reduce the risk from flooding for more than 60,000 properties in England.
There is also money for coastal defences along the south coast, including Eastbourne, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton, as well as reservoir maintenance works at Aldershot.
Caroline Douglass, executive director for flood and coastal risk management at the EA, said defending communities was a "priority."
She said climate change had made it "more important than ever".
"The delivery of the schemes will be welcome news for homeowners and businesses who have experienced flooding and may face more extreme weather.
"Our focus is now on working to deliver these schemes on time, ensuring as many properties as possible are protected," she added.
Last year, a cross-party committee of MPs said between 2021 and 2024, the Conservatives had failed to properly maintain existing flood defences or build enough new ones.
The government says it inherited flood assets in their poorest condition on record.
Floods minister Emma Hardy said the investment will "build and repair over 1,000 flood defences across the country".
More than £100m has also been earmarked to repair and maintain defences, some of which were damaged in last year's floods.
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Spending on flood defences set to rise to record levels
Environment Agency gives £68m for flood protection
Devon and Cornwall flood schemes get funding boost
Natural flood prevention scheme gets £800,000
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He argued that buses were inefficient and the central City Line's $82 million cost was wasteful. "I think we could probably save a bunch of money if we just contract with Uber and say, here you go, for our tax dollars," Bingle argued. "You don't have to stand at a bus stop in the snow or in the rain or, god forbid, there's somebody sleeping in (the bus)." Fund the police Both Bingle and Savage argued the city needed more officers, but didn't need to turn to a voter-approved tax increase last year to do so. "I opposed this measure, and the reason isn't because we don't need more police, we absolutely that doesn't need to be done through a tax increase," Bingle said. Both candidates argued that campaigners had misled the public last year when they pitched the sales tax, meant to fund police, fire and related services, arguing it lacked the promised transparency that would make it easy to follow how the money is being spent. Instead, they claimed the city had simply transferred the money into the general fund, implying it had turned into a slush fund. It is true that campaigners claimed it would be easy to track how the money would be spent, though Bingle arguably mischaracterized the purpose of the general fund transfer. City officials had argued earlier this year that portions of the tax spent on staff needed to be transferred to the budgets of the relevant departments, which are contained within the general fund, because salaries would inevitably increase faster than a sales tax, leading to layoffs. City spokeswoman Erin Hut provided documentation to The Spokesman-Review showing the positions the city anticipated funding with the tax for the next five years, which align with how the tax was sold to the public. Hut noted the documentation is available to the public and would be reviewed in upcoming budget discussions. Bingle also claimed that Zappone had signed a pledge in 2020 to "defund the police," but had since distanced himself from that pledge as it became politically inconvenient. Zappone did sign a June 2020 pledge created by progressive organization Fuse Washington that called for, among other things, no longer providing military equipment to the police and to "redirect police department funding to community-based alternatives." Zappone, along with the rest of the city council, approved on Monday a $430,000 purchase of a replacement for a military surplus armored vehicle that was totaled last summer during a high speed chase. He has also repeatedly voted in favor of budget and salary increases for the Spokane Police Department during his first term. "I've been in office for 3.5 years and that's demonstrably false, and the people trying to spread those lies are trying to scare people," Zappone said. Savage argued the city could significantly increase police staffing by cutting other costs in the city, starting with the city council office itself. He specifically called for cutting the positions of Lisa Gardner, the council's communications director, and Christopher Wright, the council's policy adviser. "We can look into our own budget and pass on those savings to help out more people and more officers become part of SPD, are understaffed majorly," Savage said. "We need more officers in the city of Spokane right now, and we can do that by also helping put people like myself on City need people up there that are backing up our SPD." Churches in politics The first question of the evening in Calvary Spokane was not about city policy, but about whether churches like Calvary should be involved in politics. "We get a lot of pushback at the church anytime we do an event like this," Johnson said. "People say the church shouldn't be involved in politics, we should stay in our own lane. What do you think about that?" Savage argued that churches should feel welcome to engage in politics "when they allow a bunch of other religions (at City Hall) to be practiced and freely done." Savage noted that the City Council has intermittently cut off people's testimony at meetings when they have begun to read Bible passages at length. "But come down there with the Quran or some sort of Buddhist sutra, they'd probably allow it," Savage claimed. It's not immediately clear if anyone has ever attempted, at least in recent memory, to read any other religious text beside the Bible at a Spokane City Council meeting. Bingle, a former pastor himself, argued that Christians have not just the right, but the responsibility to "represent your God at the ballot box," arguing their collective voting bloc could significantly sway elections from the local to state level. "I think one of the things you're going to see is that — church isn't getting more political, OK, politics is getting more theological," Bingle argued. "When they start saying that a boy is a girl and a girl is a boy ... that's not a political statement, that's a theological statement. They're attacking the very creation of God."
