Council defers vote on funding for Remembrance Day event

Prince George City Council has deferred a vote on supplying funding for the Remembrance Day Ceremony.

At last night’s (Monday) meeting, delegates from the Royal Canadian Legion Branch 43 asked council for $18,000 to put on the ceremony.

“Generally we have been able to use gaming funds to support this event,” said Sheldon Clare, Branch Chairman.

“However, the expenses have risen to the point that our meager gaming funds are stretched past capacity to pay for the ceremony. Our ability to support our other good works is thus also dramatically reduced by that situation.”

He said the main costs include facility rental, food and hot chocolate for youth, and sound production for both those present and for live streaming.

Clare also noted their Poppy Campaign is only to be used for supporting veterans and related programs.

A recent change to the City’s Sustainable Finance Policy dictates that decisions on all funding requests would have to be pushed to the next meeting.

In this case, the next meeting falls on November 20th, nine days after Remembrance Day.

Councillor Cori Ramsay also noted the Council Contingency fund doesn’t have $18,000 available in it.

She motioned to have a report brought back to council at the November 20th meeting, which was supported unanimously.

“Normally if we had more lead time, and we had made a decision to fund the event we would say we will fund up to a certain amount, wait for the financials to come in and then only fund up to the exact amount,” said Director of Finance and IT Services Kris Dalio.

“In this case, assuming that the legion has no problem front-loading the expenses, so to speak, until the event is over, we could cut them a cheque afterwards for what that amount is.”

“There’s still remains the problem that we only have $14,000 left in the contingency and we still have a few more months left in the fiscal year,” Ramsay added.

“Council will look at this and make a decision if this is a fit for us once we have that additional information.”

Mayor Simon Yu said he hoped there are “some veteran friends” who could help make up the difference.”