Woodlands County councillors passed a motion during a special meeting on Aug. 20 to apply for a $50,000 grant through the Municipal Asset Management Program delivered by the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) and funded by the Government of Canada.
However, at least one councillor did express some concern with the process of applying for the grant, likening it to the current scandal involving Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the WE Charity.
Director of corporate services Alicia Bourbeau noted that council had identified developing a long-term asset management and life cycle plan as a priority within its 2019-2022 Tactical Business Plan. To that end, administration has been researching the best ways to ensure that priority is achieved.
Noting the county’s current GIS provider is a company called MuniSight. Bourbeau said working with the company would allow them to develop an Asset Management RoadMap, a medium to long-term plan that can be used to prioritize and resource asset management initiatives and actions.
To pay for it, the company could also apply on the county’s behalf for this $50,000 grant available through FCM. Bourbeau said the company had a 98 per cent success rate in accessing these funds on behalf of municipalities.
If Woodlands County is approved for the full $50,000, approximately $30,000 will go to the company and $20,000 will come to the county to assist with offsetting various related costs.
However, Bourbeau said the county would also need to put up $10,000 to move this process forward. That money could come from the $100,000 earmarked in the 2020 Capital Projects List for asset management, which would still leave $90,000 available.
At this point, Coun. Dale Kluin asked if that meant the county would only be up $10,000 when all was said and done. Bourbeau acknowledged that was the case.
However, the county will also come out of this process with a policy, strategy and plan that will guide asset management activities in the future.
As well, it would also move the county’s asset management readiness to Level 2 of the FCM readiness scale, a self-assessment tool that can help municipalities understand where they are in terms of their asset management practices and make better decisions about investing in infrastructure like roads, buildings and waste water systems.
“It’s very true that of the $50,000 grant … we are only getting $10,000,” Bourbeau said. “But it is an opportunity to move forward with asset management, which to my understanding is a priority that has numerous starts and fails over time.”
At this point, Kluin asked if every municipality was doing the same thing as Woodlands County, noting that this reminded him of the scandal over Trudeau’s decision to award a contract to manage a $900 million student grant program to the We Charity. “It just looks bad to me,” he said.
Bourbeau admitted that the company does deal in a very niche market but they are very successful in getting funds and was ready to assist the municipality, “more so than us trying to facilitate this all ourselves.”
She also pointed out that this was Woodlands’ last opportunity to access these funds.
Kluin ultimately voted in favour of a motion to apply for the grant, as did the rest of council. However, he suggested for the benefit of any media listening to the meeting that someone “needs to figure out where … all this money is going to.”
He added, “It looks like somebody is padding their pockets.”
Mayor John Burrows later confirmed with Bourbeau that this was the second uptake this year for the FCM’s Asset Management Program — in other words, the second chance for municipalities to apply for this grant — and this program had been around in 2019.
