Sudbury residents weigh in on city spending
Dozens of people packed Tom Davies Square to present ideas on where city tax dollars should be spent
Sudbury city council received suggestions at its Tuesday night meeting on where to spend tax dollars in the coming year — from plowing more sidewalks to removing fluoride from the city's drinking water.
Spending requests from the public
- Creative Consortium wants $250,000 more for arts grants. City currently gives out $500,000.
- Advanced Medical Research Institute of Canada wants $10 million over ten years for new building.
- Greater Sudbury Emergency Response Volunteer Registry wants $60,000 over two years.
- Sudbury Cyclists Union requests at least $380,000 for cycling infrastructure (represents 1 per cent of road budget)
- Friends of Greater Sudbury Transit wants $213,000 more investedannually in the transit system.
- Greater Sudbury Watershed Alliance requests $250,000 be budgeted every year for watershed studies, beginning with Lake Ramsey.
- Rainbow Routes Association requests $1.85 million be spent in 2014 to fastrack $3.7 million Elgin Street Greenway.
- Sustainable Mobility Advisory Panel suggests spending $200,000 to plow all transit stops in the winter.
An extra $213,000 for public transit and $250,000 to study lake pollution were also among the proposals.
City councillor and budget chief Terry Kett thanked residents for their ideas, but added:
"You should have to just accept that there's also a cost to these very, very good ideas. And our running total tonight is $7.24 million."
Kett pointed out that, compared with similar-sized cities in Ontario, taxes in Greater Sudbury are quite low — and many in the city want to keep it that way.
But Denise Truax from the Prise de Parole publishing house believes there's room in the tight city budget for more arts money.
"There will always be issues with sewers and roads," she said. "There will always be questions with where to spend the money. We need to ask. We need to make the city of Sudbury understand that it needs to be a priority, right up there."
The city's arts groups banded together under the name of the Creative Consortium to ask for 250-thousand dollars more in cultural grants.
Sudbury city council will begin holding its annual budget deliberations in the fall.