It is not that they really want to appear cheap and mean but Babel council came close last Monday. They were meeting as general committee and after a series of confusing amendments to a staff report, they voted down an amount of $100,000 in the budget for distribution to charities that could meet some criteria set by staff.
Staff had gotten involved in this question because, God forbid, some councillors claimed, these should be political decisions. Maybe they were worried that they might be confused with M.P. Brown who has never met a charity that he did not want to use for self promotion. All in all, it makes Brown look crude and city council look silly.
The council position was explained under the cliché that if the citizens of Barrie were not willing to pay for something a charity needs, what right has city council to use their taxes to pay for it. There is a very simple answer to that: Because there are things that council can do on behalf of the taxpayers that council can do better. There are many examples of this opportunity.
An obvious aspect of what the city can do is to provide charities with assistance in using city services. This includes many services where recipients are charged by the city for the service. In serving their purpose, there are charities, for example, that use transit services, both regular buses and accessible services. The city is best able to make sure that charities in need of this service are looked after. That means that citizens know that that service is properly looked after by the city. That is the city’s job, is it not?
There are charities that really need access to community facilities such as swimming pools. Why should they pay full rate for the citizens who are really most in need of these facilities? And these citizens are happy to use the facility when it is least used.
Whether our Member of Parliament needs free access to the Molson Centre to promote himself and his party on the back of a charity is an entirely different matter.
The point is that the criteria the city needs to use is whether the city can make sure its facilities and services are used effectively to serve those citizens in the greatest need for them. Our city councillors need to better understand their job.
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