Funding formulas

The city can’t pay up front

On Monday afternoon Windsor lawyer Greg Goulin held a news conference at a Langlois Avenue homeless shelter to admonish the City of Windsor. The new Windsor Residence for Young Men was unable to open its doors, he said, because the city was refusing to advance $53,000 to get things rolling.

“Is it not reasonable to expect the municipality to contribute?” he demanded.

Goulin’s criticism sparked immediate indignation, but those who watched or attended city council later that night probably came away with a very different view of the situation.

To answer his question: It is not the city’s responsibility to pay the shelter’s up-front costs. It is the city’s responsibility to flow the funds that come from the federal government, and those funds are paid out once expenses have been incurred and statements have been submitted.

That’s the way it’s supposed to work. Much of the money requested will go to staffing, and employers don’t pay their employees before the job is done. Your cheque isn’t for the week ahead; it’s for the week gone by.

Councillors were put in a tough spot, especially since it looked like Goulin’s news conference, held just hours before he appeared in a delegation, was intended to put pressure on them.

It wasn’t that they didn’t appreciate the hard work that had gone into creating the shelter. Council understood that individuals and community groups had banded together to make the dream come true.

But councillors were also aware of how the system operates. The only one who wasn’t, it seems, was Goulin himself. Instead of holding a news conference, his time might have been better spent learning how — and when — federal funding is doled out to the agencies that come under its umbrella.

There was clearly a disconnect between Goulin, the city and the government’s Housing Information Services.

Sitting in council chambers, he did not know that a contract between the city and HIS had already been signed, and did not appear to know that funding for the shelter would never be given up front. Somehow, that became the city’s fault.

Councillors took no pleasure in denying Goulin that $53,000 (the annual commitment would be $204,000), but they wisely heeded the advice of Ronna Warsh and rejected the request.

“Know that when you make this deal, others will come forward,” the city’s community development and health commissioner warned when it looked like councillors might be swayed.

Giving the men’s shelter that money would have opened the floodgates for “hundreds of agencies” to come before council, asking for the same treatment. To expect the city to advance millions of dollars of municipal taxpayer money and wait for the feds to cut a cheque was simply not acceptable.

Council did provide suggestions for seeking bridge financing or securing a line of credit that would tide the shelter over. Hopefully the board of the Windsor Residence for Young Men will consider doing precisely that, because people believe it will provide a valuable service.

“The City of Windsor was just not prepared for us,” Goulin claimed at his Monday news conference.

With all due respect, it would appear that while his heart’s in the right place, Goulin wasn’t prepared for the way government funding works.