Photo by Curtis Galbraith

By Curtis Galbraith

City Hall

Council votes to keep 2020 community group funding amount at 2019 level

Jul 15, 2019 | 5:47 PM

City council has voted in favour of keeping the amount of money available for community group funding in the 2020 budget the same as it is in 2019.

That amount is $4,349,685.

Mayor Bill Given says council is trying to exercise fiscal restraint.

“Ultimately, council chose to keep the total pot of funding that’s available for community groups to the same level in 2020 as we had for this year. That will require council to review the organizations that are funded or proposed to be funded and decide whether they are all of the same relative priority. That will be some difficult work, but I think that’s ultimately the work council is elected to do.”

He adds in the past, the city has increased allocations to such groups as Grande Prairie has gotten bigger.

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“We’re really in a situation now where council has directed that the overall amount of money that the city spends needs to stay the same or go down. That means that council will have to re-prioritize and that the most important things are likely the ones that will be funded.”

Councillor Chris Thiessen voted against the idea, saying these groups have already gone through a process of making requests and some were hoping for an increase.

“Based on council’s previous decisions, we’ve sort of gone back on that and now we’re looking for savings on this. For me, personally, I think we should be looking at the whole package of what the requested funding was and, if we want to break it down from there, we can.”

Thiessen worries this is a “show of bad faith.”

“When you ask community groups to give you their two-year projections, and then they do that, and then we ignore it and say ‘Well, we’re going to reduce it this year and give you the same amount next year.'”

When asked what he would say to these groups about this, Given replied this is the same process council is asking city staff to do.

“In spite of the fact that Grande Prairie is a growing community, and that things aren’t getting less costly this year than they were last year, we are requiring our city staff to go through every program area to find savings where they can, efficiencies where they can, and to re-prioritize. It’s clear that this is a priority to council to undergo that process and it’s something that our community groups will have to undergo as well.”

Thiessen says there is what he calls “a bit of concern ” coming from some of these groups.

“That maybe we asked them to do a lot of work to justify their funding requests and we weren’t even going to give it the time of day to hear it out. That’s what I’m hearing from some members of the community. Some members are understanding. Other ones are worried, because they were anticipating growth and inflation.”

What groups will get how much of that money will be discussed at a Council Committee of the Whole meeting September 10.