To Spend or not to Spend

An interesting highlight of last night's council meeting was the discussion on Festival Grants.

Given an initial budget of $100,000 the council has $11,800 left after distributing funds earlier in the year.

The Arts committee recommended to council that these funds be distributed to the festivals who had already received money on a pro-rata basis. Councillors Duff, Coombs and Hickman were in favour of this notion.

I agree with the councillors who did not support this motion.

Why should money be spent for the sake of spending it?!

The original distribution of funds was based upon a set of criteria. Leave it at that. What other government gives MORE money to those who apply for a particular programme, if they have some funds left in the budget?

Let's not spend money for the sake of it! Fortunately there were enough councillors who saw it this way and the money will now go back into the pot and be allocated to other city expenses.