Nanaimo Council Spends $20,000 To Study Non Existent Problem

Council Spent $20,000
To Study Non-Problem

The local daily reports that the Nanaimo Men's Resource Center received a grant for $20,000 to 'identify and assist men working in street level prostitution'.

It turns out that after spending $5,000 they discovered that neither the police nor social workers had been able to identify men in such roles in Nanaimo. It is reported that one RCMP officer said in the last 13 years there have only been two street-level male prostitutes in the city.

This reveals how your elected officials and agencies funded by you, simply waste your hard earned tax dollar.

This story raises several interesting questions your City Council should be required to answer. The first is why in the world did they approve a $20,000 grant in the first place? How much scrutiny are all these 'line by line' expenses really subject to? Do Councillors really approach spending with an eye to reducing waste, or is that just so much election time talk?

The Men's Resource Center needs to demonstrate why they should receive any taxpayer money, given this whole study was their idea in the first place. They should also be required to justify the spending of $5,000 to find out the problem does not exist. Asking the police and social workers if male prostitutes are working in Nanaimo should hardly account for a $5,000 bill.

The article in the local daily is extolling the virtues of the Men's Resouce Center for returning the $15,000 they did not spend and does not ask them how they spent the $5,000 to discover a problem does not exist, nor explain why they thought it did in the first place.

Councillor Jim Kipp Spends $15,000
Returned By Men's Resource Centre

Just in case you thought the Men's Resouce Center and your local council had saved you $15,000, think again.

The local daily reports that "When the $15,000 was returned to the city, the social planning committee moved quickly to redirect the money to food service agencies."

Councillor Jim Kipp who heads the city's social planning advisory committee says the money will go a long way to helping those in our community who need food baskets. To that end apparently a new food supplement program for hungry families will launch in the coming weeks, a project funded by the money returned by the Men's Center.

Apparently this new program called Food4U will receive $6,000 for a delivery driver and $9,000 to go to Loaves and Fishes, the Salvation Army and the 7 - 10 Club to buy food between July and September.

Of course seeing that members of our community do not go hungry is something we should all support. However, you have to wonder if yet another level of government is going to maximize the help that actually gets to those in need.

Further you have to wonder if senior levels of government aren't the ones who should be funding such programs and whether municipal government is not going well beyond their mandate when they start funding such programs.

Loaves and Fishes, the Salvation Army and the 7 - 10 Club have been feeding the needy for quite sometime and you have to wonder what the Food4U program is going to supply these experienced groups can't already provide.

The other question which comes to mind is how this new project was able to receive funding which originally had been intended for the Men's Resource Center?

The over arching, burning question this whole issue does bring to the light is " What was Council thinking when they approved the $20,000 grant in the first place, and how closely are any of these grants scrutinized?".