By Cecilia Nasmith/Northumberland 89.7 FM/Today’s Northumberland
While the $100,000 Northumberland County council agreed to consider is not in the bag, the Art Gallery of Northumberland got good news at Cobourg council’s budget meeting Tuesday – approval of the $250,000 they requested.
Cobourg council had been agreeable to the request, even though it represented a big increase over their usual $150,000 ask. Gallery representatives reported at the time that they would be approaching Northumberland County for funding for the first time in their 60 years, to the tune of a $25,000 request for programming.
The request came up at the county’s Finance and Audit standing committee meeting, which Cobourg Mayor Lucas Cleveland chairs. He argued convincingly for a $100,000 contribution instead.
At this week’s budget meeting, several councillors wondered, in light of that, if the town could decrease its contribution.
First of all, Cleveland said, the county has not finalized its budget – and, in fact, they are struggling to find savings to reduce what at this point would be a 10% increase. On the other hand, at last week’s county council meeting, cutting this budget item was never mentioned as county councillors debated where reductions might be found.
At any rate, the mayor said, “there’s a $250,000 need to run this gallery.”
Should the county come through, councillors wondered, what use would this $100,000 be put to.
Cleveland relayed the terms of the motion – that the county would transfer the money to Cobourg, and Cobourg council would distribute it to the AGN as needed. In fact, he thought that investing the money “could do a lot of good,” perhaps leading to some way the gallery could require less taxpayer-generated funding.
