Leveraging taxpayer funds to assist a variety of community organizations has a “tremendous impact” on residents, believes Alex Goss, the city’s manager of community investment.
“There’s some amazing work happening in this community,” he told GuelphToday, speaking to a recently released report offering a “high-level” view of the impact of funding through community benefit agreements.
“A lot of these agreements are established around the idea that there is important work happening in the community to benefit Guelph residents. Some of that work is better done outside of the municipality but supported by the municipality.”
Last year the council-approved budget of $1.81 million was distributed to 15 community organizations, including Wellington Guelph Drug Strategy, Guelph Neighbourhood Support Coalition (GNSC), Wyndham House Youth Emergency Shelter and a variety of community celebration events organized by service clubs, among others.
Funding levels varied from $576,348 for GNSC to in-kind and priority bookings for Guelph Wellington Seniors Association.
According to a city staff report released on Friday, those funds and in-kind contributions were used to leverage an additional $2.3 million of investment from other funding sources. Additionally, taxpayer dollars contributed to the generation of 51,329 volunteer hours with an estimated value of $1,385,883 based on Conference Board of Canada’s conservative estimate on the value of volunteering.
Those 15 organizations assisted 180,562 city residents cumulatively.
The report, he explained, provides the “scope and scale” of community organization funding agreements.
“These are multi-year agreements, so there’s some expectation of the amounts annually that organizations are to receive, assuming it’s approved by council,” Goss noted. “It’s all subject to council budget approval, but when an agreement is made it’s built into the operating budget.”
The report covers only multi-year agreements and does not address one-time funding allocations approved by city council.
