City councillors preparing for 2020 budget deliberations

Sudbury's city councillors are starting to prepare for the 2020 budget deliberations.

During the city council meeting on Tuesday, several councillors brought forward motions requesting business cases for consideration in the upcoming budget. 

These are projects or initiatives that councillors would like to see funded in the upcoming year. All business cases will be debated and must be approved by council during the 2020 budget deliberations before any funding is approved.

Councillor Bill Leduc is hoping to help the Human League Association get back on its feet with one time emergency funding of $50,000.

The Human League Association is a not-for-profit organization which provides programming for children— the Breakfast Club, which provides breakfast every school day, and the PLAY program, which helps children from low-income families access extra-curricular activities.

The association made a presentation to city council in June.

"Normally they do fundraising through golf tournaments, Nevada ticket sales, [but] this year they happened to lose their ticket sale location," Leduc said. "As it is the Human League has had to put a halt on everything because they just don't have the administration to assess which children qualify." 

Leduc also requested a business case on traffic calming, asking staff to look at the costs and options of accelerating current initiatives in the city. After some debate, this motion was defeated.

Councillors Geoff McCausland and Deb McIntosh would like the city to collaborate with ReThink Green on climate change initiatives.

"We can now talk about resources, networks and partnerships the city can leverage to bring our commitments to action and implementation," McCausland said. "I believe that partnering with ReThink Green is a win-win situation that will help Greater Sudbury to continue our tradition in being an environment leader." 

Councillor Mike Jakubo would like to see more annual funding for the Northern Ontario Railroad Museum Heritage Centre in Capreol.

He said that the current volunteers, while committed to NORMHC, have been with the centre for a long time and need more help. 

"Between their museum house as well as the heritage centre, which is the former fire hall and town hall in the town of Capreol, it holds great historic value but it has also been updated with things like a railway simulator where you could actually train potential engineers," he said.