Council walked back a change to the city’s branding policy on Monday.
In October, after facing a backlash over the colourful crosswalk and median projects, council made some changes to the policy, including adding a standard that meant only one per cent of each capital project’s budget could be spent on branding initiatives on a project by project basis.
On Monday, Coun. Cathy Heron suggested deleting that one per cent per project cap, instead intending to return to the practice of being able to pool different projects’ branding money together for larger branding initiatives.
She had voted for the limitation in October, but said during the 2016 budget process she saw how one per cent per project “is just not enough to do anything.”
“The bottom line is I think one per cent of the projects should be pooled together,” she said.
Heron said emotions had been riding high the night they tweaked the branding policy and the last-minute motion meant council hadn’t had a chance to consider the impact.
"The night that we made this vote there was a lot of emotion and I think we might have made a knee-jerk reaction," she said.
She said while there had been community differences on the latest branding projects, and administration has admitted fault, there shouldn’t have been drastic changes to their policy.
The vote passed 4-3, with Coun. Sheena Hughes, Coun. Cam MacKay and Coun. Bob Russell voting against the change.
Hughes raised questions about the process. She’s tried to get council to reconsider motions in the past, she said, and hasn’t been allowed. She challenged the mayor’s ruling to allow the motion, a challenge which was defeated.
She argued to keep the per project cap, having been the one to suggest it in the first place.
“I don’t need to see more sidewalk painting or other colourful displays of that nature,” she said. “This is not fiscally responsible, people are losing their jobs left, right and centre … what they want to see is a government that’s responsible in its spending.”
She called the policy change “dangerous” and suggested that removing the clause would mean administration would have an unlimited amount of money for branding.
Coun. Tim Osborne sought city manager Patrick Draper’s interpretation of the proposed change. Draper said his understanding of council’s direction if the motion was passed was that one per cent of each capital project would still be allocated to branding, but that amount could be pooled together rather than having to apply to each individual project.
“I do not interpret this as an unlimited fund,” Draper said.
Crouse noted there’s a need to establish what is an engineering standard and what is a branding initiative, like electric buses or the urban forest canopy.
Also on the branding front, Hughes also filed a notice of motion that branding projects would have to go through a request for proposals process and include a minimum of a five-year warranty.
