Council should vote on ‘discretionary’ handouts

Report seeks end to old-city wards’ ‘slush fund’

Old-city councillors should no longer hand out thousands of dollars in community grants or sponsorships from ward infrastructure budgets without a public council vote, says a report on the controversial spending.

But some residents question why infrastructure cash should be used for sponsorships at all — particularly if the practice bypasses the city’s community grant process.

The new staff recommendation comes amid growing public scrutiny and a Spectator series on how “area rating” infrastructure cash is used — particularly, a yearly $100,000 budget exclusive to councillors in wards 1 through 8 that can be spent without oversight.

The Spectator reported the discretionary cash, which is meant for minor infrastructure, beautification or maintenance in the old City of Hamilton, has recently been spent on everything from neighbourhood movie nights to a minor hockey trip to the salary for a community group worker.

City hall critic Viv Saunders helped spur the latest city report by publicly questioning the “slush fund” discretionary cash ahead of the 2018 capital budget.

The resulting report says a staff evaluation shows close to $490,000 in discretionary infrastructure cash has been spent

since 2014 on sponsorships and grants.

That grant and sponsorship spending happened in all old city wards except Ward 7, according to the city staff review.

Some of those individual donations to organizations tallied in the tens of thousands of dollars — even though city councillors otherwise have to abide by a grant, sponsorship and donation limit from their office budgets of $350 per group.

The report also notes community groups seeking “formal sponsorships” normally apply through the official grant program called the City Enrichment Fund. Staff recommend all future grants or sponsorships of more than $350 taken from discretionary infrastructure funds be publicly voted on by council “to increase transparency and help ensure the funding is aligned to the corporate policy.” The report also recommends annual tracking and reporting of all discretionary ward spending, including from cell tower revenues and minor road repair funds.

Saunders argued the proposed changes do not address what she views as the larger issue. “They’re still spending infrastructure money on sponsorships and office expenses and other things that should be ineligible,” she said. “That’s not what the money was levied from taxpayers for.”

She also suggested sponsorships from the infrastructure cash amount to a backdoor grant system that is unfair to community groups that play by the rules. Last year, the city enrichment fund handed out about $6 million to applying groups — but almost $2 million in requests were not granted.

The idea that some groups might have “different access” to grant money is “frustrating” for Carlos Vasquez, an active organizer with the Colombian Refugees Association.

He said his group has applied repeatedly and unsuccessfully to the City Enrichment Fund to help pay for a ColombianLatin American festival, including a pitch last year for $5,534. On the upside, the group was awarded its first funding allocation last year ($3,750) for an unrelated youth soccer event.

Vasquez said he finds the point-scoring grant evaluation process challenging but fair. “If there is different access to (grants), that is frustrating,” he said. “I think it should be equal.”

Shrinking access to the official community grant fund also forced organizers of Ontario’s oldest continuously running cycling race to call it quits this year.