Peterborough city council has voted to defer changes to the city’s community grant program until 2027.
Meeting as general committee on Tuesday night (August 5), council considered a report from the city’s community services commissioner Sheldon Laidman that describes a framework for the Community Wellbeing Fund, which would consolidate the city’s funding streams for community project grants, community investment grants, and community service grants.
For arts organizations, the report proposes that a separate arts investment fund be established in 2025, which would include all city funding for the arts including individual artists grants, funding for Artweek and the city’s poet laureate program, and a new two-year pilot of a professional arts organization grant with $60,000 in funding. However, the report recommends the grant be postponed until 2027 to align with the development of the city’s new municipal cultural plan.
The city’s citizen-led arts and culture advisory committee (ACAC) reviewed the proposed Community Wellbeing Fund at its May and June meetings and, at both meetings, unanimously voted against endorsing the report.
ACAC expressed several concerns with the report, including the design of the program not being appropriate for arts organizations, the amount of funding allocated to the professional arts organization grant, and a direction against using community development grants for operating funding.
Councillor Alex Bierk put forward a motion at the general committee meeting to defer the report until the new municipal cultural plan is completed and adopted by council, a clear transition strategy for arts organizations currently receiving community investment grants is presented, and the professional arts organization grant program is in place with the committed timeline and budget reflecting the needs of the sector.
He also proposed that the existing guidelines and program details for 2025 continue to be used in the interim.
“Essentially what I am presenting is for us to stick with the old system, the system we’ve used for a long time,” Bierk said. “I’m asking that we stick with the current system that’s in place for these grants until some of the loose ends are covered that haven’t been covered in this report.”
Bierk noted that council had previously approved the development of a grant program specifically for professional arts organizations, which was followed by a public consultation and a collaborative design process led by the Electric City Culture Council (EC3) and the Art Gallery of Peterborough.
“This program represents a best practice approach aligned with art sector needs and has now been postponed until 2027,” he added. “Also, the (city’s citizen-led) arts and culture advisory committee — in two unanimous positions, once on May 28 and the second on July 11th — expressed strong concerns about the Community Wellbeing Fund framework, specifically its unsuitability for arts organizations and its de-emphasis on operating funding.”
“There’s also no alignment with the municipal cultural plan because we don’t have one. Also, the arts community has expressed dissatisfaction with ongoing shifting priorities in the cultural division of the city, including multiple leadership changes in this division.”
Bierk said the “first thing” the city needs is a cultural services director, referring to previous director Jennifer Jones’ sudden and unexpected departure from the position that the city announced on June 17, “and not a new director to walk into a program (the Community Wellbeing Fund) that is established without that oversight.”
Councillor Lesley Parnell, who said there’s been “some misinformation out in the community about this report and what it implies,” asked Laidman to clarify the purpose of the report.
Laidman noted there are no changes to the arts funding, calling that a “misunderstanding,” before asking community development program manager Chris Kawalec to provide a brief overview to council.
Kawalec spoke for around seven minutes, outlining the various changes made in the framework in response to feedback from ACAC and the arts community. He mentioned the purpose of community investment grants and how organizations have been using them to support operations.
“Investment grants have never been an operating fund for organizations, even though it’s been used like that,” he said. “Relying on this funding as your way of paying rent and staff and utilities is very precarious … Organizations are getting an habit of applying for grants to cover cost-of-living expenses, which I can appreciate, but relying on grants to do that is just a recipe for disaster when you don’t get the grant.”
Speaking in support of the deferral motion, councillor Joy Lachica said changes to grants for arts organizations should be based on the city’s new municipal cultural plan.
“To be doing it on our own without a proper municipal cultural plan to inform what the priorities are, what the strategies are, what are our arts and culture funding formula should look like, I think that we’re putting the cart before the horse,” she said. “We need to take the time because there’s been changes in (city) leadership, and because this has been put together quickly and we’re losing things that existed prior.”
Mayor Jeff Leal said he wasn’t clear on the differences between the existing grant program and the Community Wellbeing Fund, and asked Laidman to “explain it to me.”
“This program covers arts, recreation, environment, social services — it covers all those quadrants of the municipality of the community,” Laidman said. “There’s a lot of focus on the arts aspect because there’s a lot of actual take-up of the grant comes from the arts community, quite understandably, but there’s no change in the funding going towards the arts community or this whole program. It’s a tweaking of the program to try to make it function better.”
“There was a significant change. The council identified last year to try to carve out $60,000 to to make a separate professional arts funding program, that got stalled for various reasons which I can go into if council wishes. It’s not been able to be put into place for this year, so we need some extra time to be able to do that.”
“In the meantime, we would be operating the program with the full amount of money available to the arts community and the recreation community and the environment community as before, with some minor changes — as Mr. Kawalec went over — to clarify what the best use of the funding is.”
“One of the things that’s been dwelt upon was that we would provide some scoring if you’re a new initiative, because one of the challenges has been that it’s the same users of this program over and over again, and there’s no opportunity for new groups to come into this. So one of the things that’s been changed is to provide a five per cent, out of the scoring out of a hundred, if you’re a new initiative. Beyond that, I can frankly say they are tweaks to the program.”
After confirming with Laidman that the total amount of funding for the grant program would not change with the Community Wellbeing Fund, the mayor said he wanted to have a conversation with ACAC chair Katherine Carleton “just to get her take on what’s being proposed here.”
In response to Kawalec’s comment that organizations are applying for grants to cover cost-of-living expenses, Councillor Bierk pointed out that in his time on council, with two rounds of the grant program, he has never seen a successful or unsuccessful grant application that asked for cost-of-living expenses as part of the application.
Bierk added that the reason for his deferral motion is not related to the budget for the grant program, which he affirmed will not change with the Community Wellbeing Fund, but to address the concerns of ACAC and others with the proposed framework, the delay in the implementation of the professional arts organization grant, the absence of leadership for cultural services in the city, and the pending new municipal cultural plan.
“We’ve heard from the commissioner that the tweaks being offered here are not really that drastic so, therefore, the argument could go in my direction to say that it wouldn’t be that big of a deal for us to stick with the current system until these other pieces are established, like the professional arts organization stream and the municipal cultural plan,” he said.
“We already know the old system. It has worked for us. We’ve heard from people, and we’ve cleared up the idea that there will be less money available to groups — there will be the same amount of money. And therefore, until the municipal cultural plan is set and and until the new stream that has continued to be delayed is up and running, I believe that the best avenue is to continue with the current system until those things are in place.”
Councillor Kevin Duguay made some comments about the plan and then asked to call the question — a procedural tactic to end debate on an item. Chair Andrew Beamer advised Duguay that calling the question cannot be prefaced by commentary.
Mayor Leal asked Kawalec what the impact would be if a decision on the Community Wellbeing Fund was deferred. After Kawalec said “there are no big changes in this report,” the mayor asked “What was the driving factor bringing this forward?”
Kawalec replied that the impetus was council’s approval of an October 2023 staff report recommending changes to the future direction of the grant program, noting that a number of proposed changes in the original report “were walked back” and “the outcry in the community would have been far larger if we had honoured that report.”
“To answer your earlier question, there would be no substantive change to the community and those that are eligible to apply, either way,” Kawalec said.
Given Kawalec’s reply, the mayor said he supported the deferral of the report, reiterating that he wants to have a meeting with ACAC chair Katherine Carleton “and have a thorough discussion.”
After councillor Duguay’s motion to call the question was supported unanimously, councillors voted on councillor Bierk’s motion to defer the report, which carried 6-4, with councillors Dave Haacke, Beamer, Parnell, and Duguay voting against it. Councillor Matt Crowley was absent from the general committee meeting.
Items endorsed by general committee will be considered for final approval at the regular council meeting on Monday (August 11).
