The flow of billions of dollars the Ford government has been handing out across Ontario in the final weeks of the provincial election campaign continues to be stopped up in Elliot Lake.
At a committee meeting this week Elliot Lake Coun. Sandy Finamore said, "Our problem here is we have not ... had any representation from the provincial or federal levels from our community, which ... is a huge barrier to seeking funding."
A rep from Oakville-based GrantMatch, Michele Trempe, appeared remotely via Zoom at a live-streamed meeting of the Economic Development Committee Tuesday.
She stressed the advantages of hiring a non-partisan organization.
"We have delved into this before when we have had people lobbying for us that maybe we shouldn't have," Finamore said.
Trempe, GrantMatch's senior business development officer, told the committee many of her Ontario municipal clients have the same problem as Elliot Lake and have come to terms with it with her company's help.
This week's committee session turned out to be the first live-streamed hybrid meeting the city has attempted in the COVID-19 period.
The experiment suffered from various technical snags including sound problems.
Participants attending remotely complained about not being able to hear what was taking place in the city hall council chamber. At one point committee chair Coun. Tom Turner exclaimed he was practically eating the microphone in an effort to be heard by the remote participants. IT staff was summoned to correct the problem.
Three councillors plus Trempe attended via Zoom while Turner, Mayor Dan Marchisella, Economic Development Manager Steve Antunes and city CAO Daniel Gagnon attended in person.
"A lot of municipalities that are doing this don't have an economic development department," said Coun. Chris Patrie after the presentation.
He asked city staff to find out if and when a grant sourcing firm had been hired previously, to confirm his suspicion that any previous grant sourcing arrangement didn't work.
Trempe said her clients cannot duplicate either her firm's level of expertise, staff support or the contact base it provides.
She added that if GrantMatch is hired Elliot Lake would remain in full control of the grant process including dealing with anything that comes its way via city staff's involvement in the application.
"The sourcing company that we're discussing today has the ability to identify grants that meet a plethora of projects in our community," Mayor Dan Marchisella said.
He said a grant hunter would be an asset when a quick turnover is needed to pull together an application on a tight deadline.
"Staff's intention in bringing this forward was never to replace the work that staff does writing grants," Antunes explained.
"The idea for staff bringing this forward was to have an avenue for accessing grants that we don't know about," he concluded.
The committee was told if GrantMatch gets Elliot Lake $1M on its own, their fee is $100K. For other amounts over $1M, the company gets $50K per million.
To look at second, third and often successive compliance reports, they get paid $100 per hour.
GrantMatch also bills at $100 per hour if the grant or application they are applying for precludes any contingency agreement.
The committee voted to move the GrantMatch business plan forward to the full council for a decision.