The loss of control over how ward funds are spent was heavy on the minds of some city councillors Thursday, as they reviewed the leisure services and other budgets.
Ward 4 Coun. Evelyn Dutrisac was particularly vocal, expressing concern that upgrades to city parks and other local projects were going to be harder to accomplish without councillors controlling how the funds are spent.
“I'm really concerned about our roles as a councillor,” Dutrisac said. “The system we had was working very well … There was hope in our communities.
“Now we won't have any say. I would like more description…of what the role of the councillor will be have in working with staff.”
Dutrisac said that when she controlled the money in her ward, she was able to leverage volunteer time, donations and money from other levels of government.
“With the $50K that we were given, I was able to leverage hundreds of thousands of dollars,” she said. “Those HCI funds really leveraged volunteers and money.”
The healthy community initiative funds, as they are formally known, provide $50,000 a year for each of the city's 12 wards for local capital projects and donations.
Allowing councillors to make spending decisions was controversial from the start, and former auditor general – now mayor – Brian Bigger questioned the legality of the policy in a 2012 audit.
Councillors finally agreed to relinquish control of the money in November 2015, but the funds will remain in place with city staff approving funding requests.
But a proposed revised HCI policy up for debate on Tuesday seemed to still give councillors some control over spending. This week, Bigger deferred debate on the new rules to allow for more “clarity” on the councillors' role.
Dutrisac said Thursday she hopes the new policy will allow her the same opportunities to keep leveraging more money for projects.
“I was door-knocking to get money,” Dutrisac said. “At times, the role of the councillor is very important … You want to make sure you're getting things for your people.
“That $50,000 sure helped leverage some funds and volunteer work ... I'm trying to be positive, but it's hard to be.”
City councillors finished their department-by-department review of the city's nearly $500 million budget Tuesday.
Among the departments to present was leisure services. General Manager Ron Henderson said maintaining the city's 16 icepads and five indoor pools was becoming more costly, as most of them were built decades ago and require expensive maintenance – $1.7 million for 2016 alone.
“Our arenas and our pools are getting long in the tooth and require significant resources to get them going,” Henderson said.
Real Carre, the city's director of leisure services, said retrofitting city facilities to comply with provincial accessibility legislation will also be costly. For example, some of the washrooms are decades old and would require significant upgrading.
“Between the pools and the arenas, we're well in excess of $2 million,” he said. “But we feel that, as a municipality, we should have these facilities -- even though they are aging -- at an acceptable level of accessibility.”
Ward 9 Coun. Deb McIntosh asked why revenue for Sudbury Arena was $275,000 less than forecast for 2015.
“And we budgeted again for the same (amount) in 2016,” McIntosh said. “Do you have plan?”
Henderson said the two major revenue generators for the arena are the Sudbury Wolves and big special events, such as concerts. Both struggled in 2015.
“We don't try and predict the performance of the Wolves (but) the Wolves had a poor year,” he said. “OHL hockey is fickle. They may have a better team and better attendance (next fall), and we'll hit our targets.”
And only 10 major events were booked at the arena last year, Henderson said, but the downturn affected several major venues across the province, not just Sudbury.
“It was a dismally poor year,” he said, but the city already has 10 major events booked for 2016 and expect to book more.
Councillors are expected to finalize the 2016 budget Feb. 3. The initial property tax hike is estimated at 3.67 per cent.
