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By Kayla Haggett [1]
PICTON – Prince Edward County council approved its community grant funding for 2018 on Tuesday, with the Prince Edward County Memorial Hospital Foundation [2] and Sophiasburgh Hub [3] both receiving the most funding at $75,000 each.
There were 16 other grant requests over $5,000 from community groups up for consideration Tuesday evening. The total value of the requests was $512,797; council had a budget of $291,763 to spend.
It took over an hour and half to shave down the amount requested to fit within the budget, but council ended up granting almost $6,000 less than its target. The process to get there caused tension among the councillors, however; discussions over what to keep and what changes to make prolonged the meeting.
Coun. Jamie Forrester expressed concerns with the process used to allocate the grants, saying he believes funding for cemeteries and hospitals should be included in the municipal budget rather than coming through community grants.
“I don’t think it’s fair. These groups are the backbone of the County and we’re going to nickel and dime them down? And I understand that’s the process that we have to do, but I don’t like it,” said Forrester.
He made a motion to fund the request from the Prince Edward County Memorial Hospital Foundation out of money from the reserve that council has established for the hospital. Council put $100,000 into the reserve this year, and has committed $1.25 million over the next 10 years. Forrester said taking the $75,000 requested by the foundation out of the reserve would allow council to give more money to other groups.
Coun. Janice Maynard opposed the motion, saying it would be counterintuitive to draw money from a reserve council has just established.
“I’m averse to drawing money from reserves until they’re being used for their stated purpose, and … our No. 1 strategic objective is financial sustainability,” she said.
The motion was carried, however.
Monica Alyea from the hospital foundation spoke to council at the beginning of the meeting to explain the need for the money. She said that though a $500,000 grant from Ontario’s minister of health and long-term care, Eric Hoskins, was announced Monday [4], the foundation needs additional funding to help the planning process for a new hospital move forward.
“After yesterday’s announcement, we have a feeling that we need to be accelerating. And so that $75,000 is a definite number for us,” said Alyea.
The proposed County Food Hub at Sophiasburgh Central School – a project that would make use of surplus space at the school to create a centre for healthy-food entrepreneurship, training and distribution – asked for and received $75,000.
Mike Ferrell, co-chair of the steering committee for the proposed hub, told council that most of the money will be put toward crafting engineered drawings renovations to the school that are needed for the project. The group has until April 30 to raise $905,000 to prove to the Hastings and Prince Edward District School Board that the hub is financially viable. If it is unable to meet that deadline, the board will go ahead with its plan to close the school and move its students to Prince Edward Collegiate Institute in Picton.
The hub idea came about after the community rallied to find a solution to the potential closure of Sophiasburgh Central, home to approximately 130 students from junior kindergarten to Grade 8.
“It sounds like a lot of different things we’re after here, but at the end of the day, this is about keeping a school open here in the community,” Ferrell told council.
The business model for the project includes commercial kitchens and classroom spaces that could be rented out to members of the community to generate revenue.
Council also decided that the University Hospitals Kingston Foundation’s request for $61,797 to support the redevelopment of Kingston General Hospital [5] will be delayed a year. This is part of a total request for $308,985 over the next five years.
Coun. David Harrison was opposed to delaying the funding, and said that last year KGH had 13,000 visits from people in the County.
“They’re the ones that when we have really serious illness, so to speak – that’s where the community winds up. They have a great track record and I think we should be 100-per-cent supportive of that, particularly until the day our new hospital fills some of that gap,” said Harrison.
Coun. Barry Turpin, who made the motion to delay the funding, explained he did so in order to prevent reducing the amount of money the hospital would receive, instead having it spread out over a longer period of time.