Lambton College wants to accelerate a research partnership with the City of Sarnia and is looking for city council to approve $50,000 to make it happen.
Lambton College wants to accelerate a research partnership with the City of Sarnia and is looking for city council to approve $50,000 to make that happen.
Lambton College would use the money to hire a co-ordinator for the Civic Lab research partnership between the college and the city that was inked in May 2021, research and innovation department manager Joel Hodgson said.
College researchers, including students, have so far started on 10 projects and completed three, he said.
These projects have included analyzing the environmental and energy summit held earlier this year, creating a business and mapping directory, and assessing the supply of baseball diamonds and cricket fields in the city, as well as other projects with Lambton public health and Aamjiwnaang First Nation, he added.
The hire would be responsible for project development, execution, management, data tracking, liaison between the parties and promotion, he said.
“To actually then go after additional larger sized projects and then leverage against other grant funding and other resources to be able to accomplish more as part of the memorandum of understanding.”
His was one of a handful of funding requests city council heard this week in advance of city budget deliberations on Jan. 10.
A separate request asked council to waive about $320,000 in development charges for projects in Mitton Village.
Francis De Sena, speaking on behalf of the owners of the former Sarnia Collegiate Institute and Technical schoolwhere dormitories are targeted to open in September 2023 and an eventual private school is planned, asked council to exempt the project. He also asked for an exemption for plans to build 14 housing units at the former Walker Brothers building.
The $270,000 already paid in development charges for the first phase of the SCITS project, which the owners are now asking to be returned, is at least half of that project’s entire cost, he said.
“That’s a big, big number, and it’s also, quite frankly to be blunt about it, a big, big deterrent” for new investment, he said.
If development charge fees are refunded, they’ll have to be replenished from elsewhere, like city taxpayers, city CAO Chris Carter noted.
De Sena more broadly said he’d like development charges not to apply in Mitton Village as a strategy to spur community redevelopment, and for the city to revisit its community improvement plan and include some things that were omitted.
A review is currently underway into the city’s development charges bylaw.
About $60,000 for Legionnaires shower facility upgrades were requested for the Pat Stapleton Arena. Hockey club spokesperson Noeleen Tyczynski said the club would be willing to contribute as much as $25,000 over five years to the estimated $80,000 to $85,000 cost.
Similar to last year, Robert Dickieson asked for $500,000 in the budget for pedestrian safety improvements, especially for school crosswalks.
Lambton Farm Safety requested $200 for its education work.
In total, council referred roughly $1 million in grant requests to budget deliberations.
The only organization to receive funding last year for 2022, was Blue Coast Primary Care. It recruits family physicians to the community.
Recruiter Carly Cox again asked for $80,000 for 2023 to continue that work, noting five doctors were recruited in 2022, four of which start next year.
Recruitment is mostly to replace absences left by retirees, she said, but noted there are still about 15,000 residents in Sarnia without a family doctor.
“If we weren’t replacing the retiring physicians that we have, the number would have been much, much larger,” she said.
Sarnia council in 2018 created a policy to not provide operating funding to local agencies, with the exception of a few like Blue Coast – then known as the Sarnia-Lambton Physician Recruitment Taskforce – that had already been receiving grants for years.