Timmins city council isn’t ready to dole out thousands of dollars in donations just yet.

Members around the table were met with four different requests Monday night, totaling just over $22,000.  But with questions still to be answered regarding the 2017 budget, Councillor Andrew Marks put forth a motion to defer each one.

He adds that something should be put in place so that if they continue with requests for donations, they go in the order council receives them.

Councillor Pat Bamford agrees, stating it’s hard to say no to these “good groups and good people working very hard doing wonderful things.”

Because of this, Bamford adds council finds “ways of getting around our own rules.”

He says as recent as last year, despite there being $145,000 earmarked for donations, council had people looking over the budget to find more money.

This put the number up to $171,000 for 2016.

There is $19,010 already approved for 2017, a donation towards the snowcross event in March.  That money has since been transferred to the tourism budget.

Councillor Joe Campbell says council should develop a policy on what requests they would or would not support.

“Otherwise,” he says, “These (requests) are just going to roll in week after week and then it’s going to be a popularity contest and I’m not sure that’s what we want.”

Monday’s requests came from the Ojibway and Cree Cultural Centre ($8,565 for Creefest), DARE Timmins ($980.53 for the Timmins Comedy Festival), Ecole Publique Lionel-Gauthier ($9,803.51 for the Franco-Ontarian Chess Tournament) and from a local nursing student looking to finance a medical placement in Tanzania (up to $3,000).

The vote to defer was unanimous.

Filed under: Local News