City of Powell River council will consider 2021 general community cash grants-in-aid for three organizations, plus a permissive tax exemption.
At the June 24 city financial committee meeting, chief financial officer Adam Langenmaier said this year, the city received six applications for cash grants-in-aid. Of those, three are recommended to be funded. These include: Powell River Action Centre Food Bank Society, United Way Orca Bus and the restorative justice program operated through Lift Community Services. The three other applicants: Carlson Community Club, Powell River Brain Injury Society and Royal Canadian Legion Branch 164, were more suited to Powell River Community Forest as the requests were more capital in nature, said Langenmaier.
“Historically, the grants-in-aid have been for events or activities – more of an operating cost nature,” said Langenmaier.
He said the total cash grants requested exceeded the budget of $25,000 for this year. The recommendation was $10,000 for the food bank. The remaining grant money was split between United Way and Lift Community Services, with $9,078 recommended for the Orca Bus and $5,922 recommended for the restorative justice program.
There were also three grants-in-kind requests, coming from Powell River Public Library for the Willingdon Beach pavilion for weekly bubble story time, Brooks dry grad society for Dwight Hall rental for a dry grad event and the Legion for Remembrance Day transportation and Dwight Hall rental.
“All of those fit within the policy,” said Langenmaier.
Finally, there was the permissive tax exemption for Powell River Sports and Fitness Society. Langenmaier said in November 2020, the society made a request to council to provide funding for the society’s property taxes because they missed the deadline.
Langenmaier said at that time, council had authorized $19,357 to go toward paying property taxes. This year, the property tax bill came in at $22,835, leaving a property tax liability of $3,478. He said it could be funded by an overall reduction in other grants, council could go over budget or allocate under mayor and council miscellaneous expenses.
Committee chair councillor George Doubt said council was considering requests from three very deserving organizations.
Doubt recommended applying 26 per cent of the grant-in-aid to the food bank to the sports and fitness society, and suggested taking the money to top up the requests from the three organizations from the COVID-19 safe restart funding.
“That would be a cost of about $8,800 to the restart but it would give all three of the societies a similar percentage coverage from the grants-in-aid,” said Doubt. “It would provide 100 per cent of the requested funding to all of those organizations. That’s a viable solution and I wanted to put it out there to see if council agreed with that.”
Hathaway makes motion
Councillor Maggie Hathaway made a motion to take the money from the COVID-19 safe restart fund to top up the requests to 100 per cent. This means the food bank will receive $10,000, Orca Bus will receive $12,265 and Lift will receive $8,000.
Councillor CaroleAnn Leishman said it was a good suggestion for this year but she was not “super comfortable” with setting that kind of a precedent because there might not be COVID-19 funds available next year for topping up grants.
She said councillors will be seeing recommendations on permissive tax exemption criteria going forward. She said she was a little bit uncomfortable with the recommendation and may go along with it this year but council needs to think a little more carefully going forward.
Mayor Dave Formosa said the amount of permissive tax exemptions in the city is growing and it’s starting to affect the city’s revenue.
“We need to sit down and really have a good look, do more research and maybe take a meeting or two as a council and just talk about permissive taxes because it’s getting to the point where it’s a two per cent tax hit,” said Formosa. “We need to deal with this. I look forward to us chomping down on this one.”
Hathaway agreed with the mayor and said organizations are going to have to show need.
“We’re providing funding to some organizations that clearly don’t need it,” she added.
Doubt said it is going to be on the agenda soon.
City council will consider the recommendation from the finance committee to apportion the funds as moved by Hathaway.
