Williams Lake commits $404,000 towards Fee-For-Service agreements

Seventeen organizations and one new organization will receive money from the City of Williams Lake as part of the City’s 2021 Fee-For-Service Agreements.

A total of $404,100 will be spent on the agreements that are used by the City to secure services from not-for-profit organizations for a specified fee.

Services provided generally tend to be operating public facilities, coordinating high-profile public events annually, or serving the social function to the community. The agreements are intended to provide a stable source of basic funding to allow the non-for-profit groups to undertake effective planning, promote voluntarism and strengthen and enhance the community’s wellbeing.

There is 17 existing Fee for Service Agreements with the funding of $383,100. They were awarded in 2019 for 3-year funding – 15 awarded by the City Council and 2 City-funded FFS, but awarded by Joint City / CRD Committee. The one new application is from the Williams Lake Community Policing Committee for $21,000 annual funding. The organization is proposing to continue community safety and crime reduction programs it was running till 2019, but temporarily stopped in 2020 due to the key staff’s retirement.

The City used to fund non-profit Fee-For-Service from the Gaming Revenue it received annually. However, due to COVID-19 and casino shut down, the City did not receive this revenue in the Provincial 2020/21 fiscal year, and City taxpayers funded Fee-For-Service. The City is assuming that the Gaming Revenue will resume in 2021/22. However, if not, the funding burden will continue to fall solely on City taxpayers.