Key Conversations: Barrie City Council Votes on the 2021 Budget (Extended)

Barrie has a budget for 2021.

From January 18th until the 25th, General Committee amendments were discussed, challenged and coordinated on. 

Now, City Council ratified the final budget. With that, the city approved a 0.92 tax increase -- far less than the proposed 3.75 per cent which was proposed. 

But as always, some areas of the budget inspired a little more debate. 

Councilors McCann and Harvey moved a discussion of a parking lot at the Riverwood Park -- if a community garden is moved there. 

They moved to approach the Koslov center about using their lot -- which would save a considerable amount of money currently proposed for the parking lot. 

Council was pretty split -- some really wanted to save parkland and money, some say forcing residents to cross the road is unsafe. 
 as the decision to move the garden to that site hasn't been made yet. 

Council voted down that amendment -- meaning that if a community garden comes to the spot, a gravel parking lot is on the way too, to address some accessibility concerns for users of those gardens.

Next up, an amendment to spend $500,000 on remediating soil at a city-owned property on Vespra St.

And to use a loan of $3 Million to solicit proposals for modular housing on that land. 

That amendment was up for discussion last week too, however throughout the past days, Aylwin and Councilor Thomson spent time tweaking it-- adding in some safeguards to make sure that council would have the approval of proposals.
And be sure to remember: nothing is approved except remediation of land -- the motion does say something will happen on the site, but more information will be reported to City Council before a build is approved. 
McCann said his issue is a concrete assurance that if the city gets federal funding for similar projects, or if Simcoe County or City staff report back differently, the city is not pigeonholed into this one type of supportive housing project at this location. 

But his question was answered: Can Council decide to not build on the Vespra st location? Yes. 

Councilor McCann then moved an amendment: cap the cost of remediating the soil at the Vespra St location at $500,000: that amendment to the amendment passed. 

There was one last amendment to that amendment, moved by Councilor Aylwin and Natalie Harris, for community meetings, that would happen in the event of any proposal being accepted at the site. 

McCann said he’s been contacted by 30 people with negative comments about the proposal already. 

However, Council unanimously passed both the $500,000 and directing staff to start the process of borrowing $3 Million to be used for a supportive housing project at that location. 

It’s clear that multiple councilors worked together on this -- addressing the concerns with the proposal to make sure it could pass with unanimous approval. 

Mayor Lehman ended council with a statement on COVID-19. 

The Roberta Place long-term care home outbreak is now confirmed to have multiple cases of a highly contagious strain of COVID-19, and he says the next week is really the most important in Barrie’s fight against the pandemic.