Bay Roberts council to mull cost implications of provincial grant

By Craig Westcott

Bay Roberts council had a ‘Now hold on there Bubbalouie’ moment Tuesday when it realized the Town was being offered a provincial subsidy for a program it hadn’t budgeted for this year.
The money, in what the provincial government is billing as a “Community Collaboration Grant,” will cover 90 per cent of the cost of hiring an enforcement officer to be shared with the towns of Harbour Grace, Spaniard’s Bay and North River. One of the conditions for the money is that the towns commit to carrying on with the project as a “long-term collaboration.”
Still, Mayor Walter Yetman was excited to see a letter from the Province offering the Town $81,000 to be shared with its neighbours.
“I really, really like to see those two words together – community collaboration,” said Yetman, referring to the Province’s letter of approval. “That means working together and getting together to provide services, or what have you. Cooperation, collaboration, it’s all on the same lines.”
Yetman said the Town’s protective services officer did a tremendous job preparing the application for the grant. He then asked chief administrative officer Nigel Black for an explanation of its financial implications.
“Obviously there is a budget component of this,” allowed Black, pointing out it had been broached during council’s budget discussions last fall. “Ultimately, at the end of the budget meeting, we left that decision until we found out whether we got the funding or not. So, we’ll have to discuss our portion of this funding arrangement.”
Black advised council should also wait until the director of protective services returns from leave before figuring out a plan to go forward and meeting with the other towns.
Yetman said he liked that idea and is looking forward to working with the other towns.
He then called for comments from around the table.
“When this came out in budget consultations, we weren’t really committed to this, I didn’t think we were,” said Deputy Mayor Geoff Seymour. “I’m all for collaboration and sharing resources. But in (the budget) discussions, this has a long term (obligation). Once that initial grant is off, there’s an investment from the Town above and beyond what we’re currently doing, so I thought that was going to be held off for further discussion.”
Black said the Town hadn’t expected a decision from the Province so quickly.
“And just to be clear, my point is that we haven’t committed to anything,” Seymour said.
“No, ” said Black. “We haven’t accepted the agreement and certainly at the end of the day in our budget we didn’t allocate the funds. Those funds were in it at one point in time, but they were taken out, so if we’re going to get into this agreement we’ll have to figure out how we’re going to contribute our portion, if that’s what council wants to do.”
Councillor Perry Bowering said he was on the same page as Seymour. “I thought that we had put it on hold for a while,” he said.
Councillor Dean Franey repeated Black’s point, “that we would hold it depending on the response we got back from government,” he said. “If they said ‘No,’ well then it didn’t matter; if they said ‘Yes’ then we would revisit it, I guess… But this is the fastest we’ve seen government do anything.”
Yetman then summarized council’s feeling on the matter. “So can we have a motion to move this to the committee of the whole for further discussion, once the director is back?” he asked.
Deputy Mayor Seymour agreed and made a motion to do just that. Councillor Frank Deering seconded it.
The motion passed unanimously.
“That’s a great discussion, again,” said the mayor.