Bruce County council has directed staff to finalize a procedure for receiving funding requests from community groups.
Council discussed a potential strategy, which included a deadline of May 31st, to receive requests from organizations with the intent of then discussing such requests and adding them to the budget if approved.
During discussions, there was a question about whether funding requests should be restricted to Bruce County-based charities and organizations.
Director of Corporate Services and Treasurer Sam Dinsmore explained that it was possible, but “A lot of these charities are regional, and sometimes they don’t quite follow the county lines, and we do see a lot of Grey-Bruce, Grey-Bruce and Huron, so it is a bit tricky to put that location and region specifically in the criteria, but it would be something that staff would report back to council in the process.”
Previously, council had directed staff that the county would avoid giving funds to healthcare-related organizations.
“Municipalities get financial report requests outside of the established funding streams. But there is another alternative to the format that’s presented, and I don’t disagree with what you’re saying here,” said Councillor Kenneth Craig. “But if the county has established its prerogative… such as Spruce the Bruce or Community Grant programs, perhaps the response is ‘No, we’re not going to do that,’ because these are the streams that we’ve identified, these are the criteria that we’ve established to determine who is eligible and what is important for our county and if you don’t fall inside of that, the answer is no.”
Deputy CAO Sean Morphy answered, saying that it was precisely the type of direction that staff required from council.
There was also a concern for any requests that came form groups after the proposed deadline.
Warden Luke Charbonneau said, “We’re not going to deny delegations from groups or organizations who are coming to council to ask for things, and if it happens to be on the 22nd of August instead of the 31st of May, we’re going to hear that delegation and council will consider it.”
Charbonneau later said that he felt it was a good idea to have a process in place, as long as staff understood that there should be flexibility.