That Staff prepare a report back to Council with options to expand funding to the Vandalism Relief Grant fund, and that the grant program be amended to allow properties/businesses to apply more than twice per year, and to receive up to $2500 per incident, up to a maximum of $5000 per year.
Thank you so much. If we might, seconded by Councillor Thorpe. Proceed. Yeah, I appreciate it being the first real motion that I've brought forward, so thanks for going easy on me. But there was a plan for Council to look at this again in October, So, we're a little bit ahead of schedule re-examining this Vandalism relief grant, but I've noticed that we've had several incidents where the same business has been hit more than twice, and it's not happening a lot, but it's enough that the Chamber, which is overseeing the grant fund for us, has already made one exception and allowed a business to access it more than And I think that it would be nice to have councils backing on that change. And the businesses that I've spoken to have been supportive of this. Obviously, it's a really tangible way that we can help the vandalism and window breakage issue. And the more that we have businesses with windows boarded up for lengthy periods of time, the worse it looks. it's a waterfall of negative impacts from that. So it's a small change and I initially brought this forward wondering if we could put that $75,000 that the province committed to expanding the downtown safety action plan. I thought this might be a good place to put that money. So that's why there's the first part about looking at options to expand it, whether or not we can actually use that $75,000 for this use is a separate question, but I would hope that that could be potentially something that we would look at. Thank you very much.
Thank you. My concern still remains that we're only doing this for the downtown businesses. I saw a business up on Dover Road that had a shutdown because of all the vandalism, so they've actually just gone out of business because they can't afford it. So I think it's grossly unfair, as I've said before, that we're only looking after downtown businesses and not the rest of the city who's going through the same type of vandalism. So unless it extends to all of city businesses, I'm not going to be able to support. I do appreciate the fact of the $75,000, which is meant for downtown. I have no issue with that. But I'm very concerned that once again, and I hear from many businesses that we're favoring downtown over them, and I think we need to expand this program to all businesses, not just one. Thank you.
Councillor Thorpe Thank you Your Worship. Yeah I support the intent of this motion but I also agree with the comments expressed by councillors Perino and Armstrong regarding maybe expanding it. To me my first reaction when I read this was that surely this should be part of our 2024 budget discussions and maybe a larger discussion regarding this entire program and the extent of it and the funding of I'm really torn at this point. I realize that we're just asking for a staff report, but I just wonder if that's a good use of staff time now as opposed to during the coming budget process. Thank you.
Thank you. Councillor Manley. Thank you, Your Worship. I am in support. I'd like to see a report from staff. I'd like to know what money has been used up. Some of these businesses downtown have been hit multiple times. I'm also curious about other parts of town, you know, what the vandalism levels are in other parts of town. But I do know that in our downtown core, we've had businesses that haven't had a problem with vandalism over the 10, 15 years that they've been operating. and then all of a sudden they're dealing with multiple window breakings and break-ins in short period of time. So I'd like to know how this fund has been used so far, whether there's need for it in other parts of the community. So I'm interested in seeing the report. Thank you.
Thank you, Your Worship. Full support of this motion and thank Councillor Eastmere for bringing this forward. I understand this was born of conversation with local business owners. To Councillor Armstrong's point, I believe that the expansion of the program is going to be brought to us in October with that fuller review. If I could have staff assurance, that would be great. But in the meantime, I think this is a really practical way to support businesses that are being hit again and again. So, absolutely interested in seeing expanded. I believe that that was something we were going to look at in future once we saw how this was working downtown. As we await that information, I think this is a really great option to support local business. Thank you. Thank you.
you Councillor Brown thanks Your Worship I'm going to support the motion as is I think well this motion speaks to expanding and I'm actually quite interested in actually seeing how much the program has been utilized. Hopefully there's some data on to what type of items and I think that's important because I want to have a good sense of that before we start talking about what expansion might look like citywide because you know we could find out that you know this program is being accessed to such a degree that as much as we may want to expand it citywide it's just not possible. So for that reason I think from some of the information that if this report came back to Council, we'd be able to sort of have a better idea of how we might want to triangulate how we move forward with respect to some of those goals citywide and both downtown. Thanks.
Thank you, Your Worship. and my question through you possibly to staff is so we don't know whether or not we can use the 75,000 that we got for this program or do we know whether or
not we can? Your Worship the original understanding is the original intent of the 75,000 was to do things like a community safety plans okay in our discussions at a staff level with the province they recognize that council's already done work on the downtown and you've also done your youth resiliency strategy which you recently endorsed a lot of work on kind of that end so they have told us that there may be some flexibility in using that funds but we're still trying to get some clarity on that so if the if this is adopted we'll look at options if there's a need for expanded funding we would look at
options and if that's available we would bring that back okay thank you and a second question if I may so when this happens to a business owner it has to be reported to the police so that an investigation is started is that correct for them to receive the money or receive any money is that correct they don't so is there is there any concern about that is there a fear that it might be um
That's, that's, that's certainly not a requirement of the criteria that council adopted. Okay, unless it's something additional that the chamber is asking as part of their application, I'm not aware of that, but it's not been an issue to. But if we're going to review the program, like I think Councillor Eastmeyer mentioned, we were kind of anticipating to review it a year after implementation. But if we're going to review this now, that's something we could certainly look at and your worship, a comment.
I agree with Councillor Armstrong that you know, it's a good program but it should be citywide and If there was some way that we could do that I'd certainly be much more in support Thank you