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One well-loved community event was conspicuously absent from this year’s list of council community grants recipients.
During their council meeting on May 22, councillors approved $87,000 in council community grant spending, doled out to 11 non-profit groups. This marks the first time council grants have been handed out through a formal application process.
However there was one group not on the original list, and the event’s organizer came before councillors to plead for reconsideration.
“It’s not easy out there. I know that,” Jazz and Blues at the Station organizer Charlie Gudaitis told councillors. “The arts and culture sector is important to a vibrant community.”
The objective of the council community grants are to provide assistance to organizations or individuals that demonstrate a social, economic or environmental benefit to the Town of Collingwood, its citizens or taxpayers. The intake period for the council community grant program for 2024 closed April 15.
Applications were forwarded to council from staff with an evaluation tool for scoring.
This year’s council grant recipients were:
- Collingwood Climate Action Team ($20,500)
- Georgian Triangle Humane Society ($12,800)
- Home Horizon Georgian Bay Residential Services ($11,100)
- Theatre Collingwood Association Inc. ($10,800)
- The Rainbow Club of South Georgian Bay ($10,800)
- The Institute of Southern Georgian Bay ($7,800)
- Hope Chapel – School Lunch Program ($4,400)
- Big Brothers Big Sisters of Grey Bruce & West Simcoe ($3,500)
- Georgian Bay Cancer Support Centre ($1,600)
- Pine River Institute ($1,300)
This past February, council passed a new formalized policy to hand out community grants. There are two funding streams: community grants through council and the community recreation and culture grants, which are decided by town staff and were doled out earlier this month.
Double dipping is not permitted through the policy, as organizations that receive funding through the town’s community recreation and culture grant program are not eligible to apply for a council community grant.
Gudaitis noted that Jazz and Blues at the Station has been running for 15 years, in part due to financial participation from the town.
He said that this year he dealt with some health issues, which meant he missed the April 15 deadline to apply for the council community grant.
“I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to produce Jazz and Blues,” he explained. “Fortunately, I’ve made a recovery, and decided on April 15 unfortunately, that I wanted to go on with the event.”
He requested $6,000 to pay for bands and sound production, which he said he’ll need to run the program starting at the end of June.
In the 2024 budget, council allotted $100,000 for council community grants. Earlier this year, the Collingwood Girl Guides came before council to ask for money for a trip to Iceland, to which council passed a motion to allot up to $13,000 of the grant money toward that purpose.
That left $87,000 remaining, and of the applications received and forwarded to council for consideration, the 10 approved applications amounted to $84,600. There was $2,600 leftover to be used at council’s discretion.
Council used that discretion on Wednesday night.
At the end of discussion, Mayor Yvonne Hamlin put forward an amendment to provide the remaining $2,400 in grant funding to Jazz at the Station, with an additional $3,600 expected to come from the Mayor’s Golf Tournament proceeds. The amendment and motion were passed by a unanimous committee vote.
The vote regarding Hope Chapel was voted on separately, as Deputy Mayor Tim Fryer and Coun. Chris Potts declared conflicts on that grant.
“This is not an easy thing to do. It takes a lot of time and effort,” said the town’s treasurer Monica Quinlan. “It’s hard to see so much need and have to try to fit it into an envelope that isn’t astronomical.”
Any decisions made at a committee of the whole meeting need to be ratified by council at their next regular meeting before going into effect.
