ARICHAT: Municipal councillors have found a way to fund a grant request from a community group.
During the Oct. 24 regular monthly meeting of Richmond Municipal Council in Arichat, council accepted a recommendation from the committee of the whole to defer a $4,500 grant request from the Isle Madame Historical Society (IMHS) for a Type 1 Infrastructure Grant to the regular monthly meeting in November.
Council also agreed to explore funding opportunities for the society under the Canada Community Building Fund (CCBF).
Chief Financial Officer Jason Martell wrote The Reporter via email to explain that the request was made to help fund upgrades to maintain the physical integrity and ensure continued access for community events and activities in the Lorenzo Building at LeNoir Landing in Arichat.
Martell wrote that the IMHS wants to make repairs to the retaining wall and front and back decks of the structure which will improve safety and accessibility.
Later in the meeting, Martell said the project would qualify under the CCBF, but CAO Troy MacCulloch said council needs to provide some guidelines.
“It is true that in a lot of other municipalities, they keep the CCBF for their own municipal infrastructure as it did replace the old gas tax which was used mainly for roads and infrastructure,” he told council. “We don’t want the CCBF to be just opened up.”
With regular grant funds almost depleted, Warden Amanda Mombourquette said council needs to decide how to proceed.
“We would need to make a decision on whether or not to proceed with funding, providing $4,500, or to provide some other amount from the grant fund, from the CCBF,” she noted.
District 3 Councillor Melanie Sampson said potential uses of the CCBF have been well discussed.
“I’m also just concerned about precedent setting, to be honest, because we haven’t, as a council, really decided where we want to go with that policy,” she said. “We still have money in our Type 4, I know that we still have a lot of months left to go. I’d be inclined to not pay it out of the CCBF, just with the lack of policy.”
Although he sees it as a “worthwhile project,” Deputy Warden Brent Sampson agreed that council needs to first decide how to proceed with the CCBF.
During budget deliberations, council did set aside money for harbourfront development through the CCBF, said Mombourquette.
“We set up the fund; specifically it was intended for waterfront development-type things,” she noted. “I think we had allocated something like $50,000 for that so it’s still CCBF funds but we still take it specifically from that pot.”
Council then agreed to approve the request from the IMHS using the harbourfront development fund under the CCBF.