The Mayor of Kamloops continues to push for grant funding to be used more frequently as part of the overall budgeting process.

Reid Hamer-Jackson says he has been looking for potential grant opportunities from other levels of government in his spare time to try and ease the burden on taxpayers, who are expected to face a property increase of just under 10 per cent this year.

“And some have ended but I know that there are going to be new ones so have we explored any of those because there are a lot of federal and provincial grants in a lot of different areas,” Hamer-Jackson said during Tuesday’s Committee of the Whole meeting.

Hamer-Jackson also said he is aware of “a lot of communities” that aren’t as big as Kamloops that get “a lot of funding through grants.”

“Its stressful for a lot of people,” Hamer-Jackson added, citing current economic realities. “I just was listening on the radio this morning in Ontario how they’ve had so many people who can’t make their mortgage payments and credit cards are going up and everything like that.”

The mayor’s comments Tuesday were in response to a plan by the City to put aside $6-million towards replacing the roof at Sandman Centre. The proposal is to put $2-million into a reserve fund in 2026, $3-million in 2027, and $1-million in 2028.

“Not saying anything against our grant writer but there are a lot of grants that will be coming up and we’ve got time [before that project gets underway] so do you not feel that there is a possibility that we could get some grant funding from this instead of taking it out on the taxpayers,” Hamer-Jackson said.

But the City’s Corporate Services Director David Hallinan told Hamer-Jackson that is not how most granting processes work.

“Many of the grant requirements out there expect to see municipalities have a plan if they are not successful,” Hallinan said.

“Those grants are distributed out based upon a number of criteria that is set by the granting organizations, and I think that upper levels of governments are looking to put grants out there as much as possible, but many of the grants become oversubscribed.”

“Many municipalities are facing exactly he same issues and challenges we are,” Hallinan added. “And I believe a lot of the lenses that the granting organizations look at are can the organization and can the community cover off that need prior to going forward.”

It is not the first time Hamer-Jackson has floated using grant funding as part of the budgeting process, having also suggested it as a way to ease what was then a nearly 25 per cent increase to water rates.

“I’m kind of a positive person when it comes to winning the game,” Hamer-Jackson said in November last year. “When people are saying that there’s infrastructure grants and all that, why don’t we think positive? [Why don’t we] think that we may get those grants instead of thinking that we may not?

Hallinan said at the time that the risk was too high as there was no guarantee that Kamloops would get all of the grant funding it applied for.

“I don’t believe it’s good fiscal management to be relying upon uncertainty with grants to be able to pay for projects,” Hallinan said last year, noting the mayor’s proposed five-year plan would have put the water utility reserve “into a negative position” by the third year.

Hallinan said Tuesday that for every $3 in grants the City applies for, it gets about $1.40 back. He also said if a grant application is successful, the city then reallocates the money meant for that particular project to something else.

Hallinan said that is the plan should the City be able to secure some grant funding for the Sandman Centre roof replacement project, which is expected to get underway in 2027.