High River Town Council has given out just over $1,500,000 over the past three years through their Property Tax Relief Program. The final applications were approved last week to help any home owners and businesses unable to inhabit their residences for at least 90 days due to the 2013 flood.

Acting CAO Tom Maier says the number of people needing assistance has gone down significantly each year.

"The first year of the program, in 2013, we had approximately 840 homeowners that qualified. They were able to get tax relief of slightly over $1,000,000. As each year went along people returned back to their homes. In 2015 we're at 69 properties."

He says now there are only a few distressed properties left.

"We're noticing that even with the number of homes that are distressed properties, we're down to I think 13. That's going down all of the time, as homeowners are able to get back on their feet, get their properties repaired or in some cases finalize their funding with DRP and decide whether they have to rebuild or tear down."

Maier says he hopes everyone who was affected took advantage of this opportunity.

"My fear is that we'll have homeowners that maybe come out of the woodwork in the coming months that didn't apply, and they'd be looking for funding now. That would be unfortunate, so hopefully we don't have too many in that situation because we wanted to give as much money as possible. We'd hate to leave any dollars that could have gone back into the pockets of local residents."

He says the town is seeing most people back in their homes now, or getting decisions made on finalizing their funding through DRP.