Non-profit leader speaks out as city politicians mull cuts to community grants

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London’s non-profits shouldn’t pay the price for a rubber-stamped bloated police budget that’s raising taxes, a 350-organization network says as it launches a campaign against community grant cuts.

Pillar Nonprofit Network is calling on organizations, including the biggest ones with the biggest voices, and all Londoners to push back against a city proposal that could see $500,000 a year in community grants cut to $250,000 at best and zero dollars at worst.

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The community grants go mainly to smaller grassroot organizations, from cultural and arts groups to homelessness agencies, Pillar CEO Maureen Cassidy said.

“They’re small organizations as far as staff and funding go but they’re serving large populations,” she said. “Some of them are life-saving services.”

The smaller organizations are fiscally responsible by necessity and rely on the city grants not only to operate, but to leverage other funders to help each year, Cassidy said.

The 1,800 non-profit organizations in London are an economic driver as well, and without the community grants, many won’t survive amid declining donor dollars and increased demands for service, she said.

The campaign has put Pillar in an unusual spotlight for the non-profit group, known in the past largely for its annual awards dinner and hardly for launching campaigns to battle mayoral decisions.

“We understand that this sort of advocacy can be scary. Nonprofits don’t like to burn bridges to potential partners and funders. But, frankly, the city hasn’t even put enough money on the table to buy our silence,” the Pillar campaign’s website states.

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Cassidy is standing firm on comments made a few months when the issue first surfaced, that council’s tax increase problem is one of its own making because of a “huge increase” with little debate to the police budget.

Council “is almost laying the blame on the non-profit sector,” she reiterated in an interview on the weekend.

“Funding in the nonprofit sector did not cause this problem, and cutting this amount from this grants program is not going to solve the problem,” Cassidy said.

London’s four-year city budget crafted by Mayor Josh Morgan and approved by council early this year. It included a tax hike of 8.7 per cent this year and currently calls for increases of 7.4 per cent in 2025, 6.4 per cent in 2026 and 6.8 per cent in 2027.

More than half of the 2024 hike comes from the police budget, which got a 28 per cent increase year-over-year increase in 2024 and will cost $672 million over four years – an average of $168 million annually.

The budget included buying a second armoured vehicle, electric vehicles and drones, rebuilding headquarters, hiring more officers and building a training centre, and was passed with little debate at council. The police board spent more than $100,000 of tax dollars to hire a public relations firm to sell the budget to taxpayers and politicians.

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At the time, the city budget included spending about $500,000 on community grants for non-profits over the four years, drawn from property taxes.

But with taxpayer blowback in the wind, Morgan struck a panel to find ways to cut costs or increase revenues to ease the tax hike. One target: the community grants.

The mayor is proposing to cut grants coming from tax dollars to zero, and replace them with a $250,000 program from a community investment reserve fund – but only if the fund has more than $1 million in it.

“Otherwise, zilch. Zip. Zero,” the Pillar campaign says on its website.

The $500,000 community grant program represents .02 per cent of the city’s $1 billion annual budget, about $6 on the average property tax bill, Cassidy said.

The matter is heading to public budget discussions and Pillar has a few methods for Londoners to express their support for keeping the community grants intact.

The campaign website has a form that if submitted, will send a message to a person’s ward councillor and the mayor.

Cassidy is calling on larger organizations, such as the London Food Bank, United Way, CMHA Thames Valley Addiction and Mental Services and Pathways Employment Help Centre to sign a joint letter to council opposing the cuts.

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The mayor will presented a budget update at a meeting on Oct. 29 and, from Oct. 30 to Nov. 18, there will be a series of pop-up information sessions and ward councillor meetings.

Pillar’s campaign encourages Londoners to fill out the city’s online survey on budget amendments, and and attend information meetings, especially the official public participation meeting at city hall on Nov. 19.

Councillors will debate the amendments to the budget during a meeting on Nov. 21, and an extra meeting on Nov. 22 if needed.

A meeting will be held Nov. 27 to finalize any changes, and Morgan will have to signal his intention to veto changes under strong mayor powers by Dec. 2. If he does, council will have the opportunity to override a mayoral veto with a two-thirds majority.

For more information on Pillar’s campaign, click here.

rrichmond@postmedia.com

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