Status quo for $50K 'slush funds' in Sudbury after council can't decide

No city councillors voted Tuesday night to keep the status quo on the contentious $50,000 Healthy Community Initiative funds, but that's what they'll get.

After voting on four different options, none of them got enough votes to pass.

That means nothing will change and the total annual allotment of $600,000 will stay in the hands of city councillors.

For the first time, the new city council was clearly divided over the options, which included moving the money into the leisure services budget administered by staff, researching more options or scrapping the funds altogether.

Ward 11 councillor Lynne Reynolds gave an impassioned speech, arguing the funds, that only see community groups coming to the city "with their hands out", should be abolished.

"We do not need to mask this old fashioned patronage as a benevolent function of council," Reynolds said.

Ward 12 councillor Joscelyne Landry-Altmann argued that funding needs to be guaranteed to each ward, arguing that "we are not equal. Ward 12 is the most needy."

But her Ward 10 colleague Fern Cormier said the new council has proven that they can put parochial concerns aside and take care of all of Greater Sudbury.

"When it comes to the haves and have-nots argument, I don't buy it," he said.

Ward 7 councillor Mike Jakubo was one of several who argued that each ward should continue to get $50,000, but that councillors should not control the purse strings.

"The funds do do a lot of good but the system is severely flawed and needs to be fixed," said Jakubo, who is interested in exploring some kind of participatory budgeting system.

Ward 5 city councillor Robert Kirwan urged his colleagues to make a decision and was incensed that one of the options was to look for more options.

"Develop options to revise the HCI policy? What kind of option is that? Let's have an option to develop options and then we'll have more options to discuss in June?"

"I really don't want to talk about it any more"

Mayor Brian Bigger was one of several council members to vote for two different options, one that would keep the funds and another that would scrap them.

But after the meeting, he stressed that the rules had been tightened up in 2012 and that it was time to move on.

"As I say, it's the will of council and we're moving forward."

Bigger also said he wants to see if there's a way for council to hold another vote.

But Ward 9 city councillor Deb McIntosh said she hopes that doesn't happen.

"I really don't want to talk about it any more, quite frankly. It's such a miniscule part of the budget."

But McIntosh said she will keep her campaign promise to not personally dole out the $50,000 in her ward.

She says she will now have to find a way to have citizens make those decisions for her.

"I've told people who have asked me already that I'm not going to influence where the money is going. I'm not going to be handing any money out."