Sheldon Kennedy Child Advocacy Centre’s placement within CPIP comes into question
Photo courtesy of the office of the mayorMembers of city council met in March to discuss a number of important issues, including the introduction of a new program, and the placement of the Sheldon Kennedy Child Advocacy Centre within the CPIP.
The CPIP was created in 2005. It works with the Calgary Police Service, other city business units and grassroots community agencies to foster and develop crime prevention.
The CPIP focuses on three key areas: street issues, children and families, and community building. To ensure they can effectively focus on those areas, the CPIP provides seed funding to new prevention programs instead of acting as a permanent funding source.
In 2014, CPIP will fund a total of $606,000 to introduce the new “Up the Wall” program, which is designed to prevent graffiti that’s been partnered with the Calgary Police Service.
“Up the Wall” will receive a proposed $66,000 of funding from CIPC. With those funds being relocated, though, it means that other programs aren’t receiving the same funding as they’ve received in the past.
Ward 10 Councillor Andre Chabot said that the funding should be reconsidered, and expressed his concerns about the programs that will have less money to work with this time around.
“Amend it to reintroduce that $60,000 back to those eight organizations that relinquished some funds to be able to accommodate this new program,” Chabot suggested during council Monday morning.
Chabot went on to say that several organizations will struggle if the funding is removed.
Ward 13 Councillor Diane Colley-Urquhart asked if they should push the decision back to CPIP’s administration instead of making a decision during the meeting.
“I would hope that we would refer this back to administration,” Colley-Urquhart suggested. “There are other organizations that certainly would like to be funded as well, and there’s a reason why administration didn’t make this recommendation.”
Colley-Urquhart’s suggestion was received well by Mayor Naheed Nenshi and councilor Chabot. The scheduled meeting will now be held on April 30, 2014 to finalize the budget.
A question was raised by Nenshi regarding the funding for the Sheldon Kennedy Child Advocacy Centre.
“There was on here, that surprised me, the Sheldon Kennedy Child Advocacy Centre, an organization I know very well that does extraordinary work,” Nenshi said. “But it doesn’t do crime prevention. It does work helping the victims of crime, so I was a bit surprised to see it on the list of crime prevention organizations.”
The Sheldon Kennedy Child Advocacy Centre is set to receive $90,000 of funding from the CIPC for 2014.
The question didn’t receive an answer or explanation during the meeting, but it will be presented and discussed at the next meeting.
lsilva@cjournal.ca