Youth cabinet fights for money

By Mike Hinds

The Ottawa Youth Cabinet wants to provide grants for concerts, play grounds, skate parks, and other recreational activities.

The only thing missing is the cash.

“Currently we have no money,” says Russell Ullyatt, co-chair of the cabinet.

Grants would come from the cabinet’s $50,000 Youth Initiative Program, a part of the nearly $94,000 it is requesting from city council.

The cabinet, which recently presented its request to the city’s health, recreation and social services committee, will have to wait until next spring’s city budget to see if it will receive any money for its projects.

The 21-member cabinet was established four months ago to represent youth interests to city council.

Leonardo Farren, the cabinet’s Somerset Ward representative, could not comment on the Youth Initiative Program. Still, he says the cabinet’s work will benefit Centretown by providing activities for youth. But less money means fewer activities.

“If council gives us less money for the Youth Initiative Program, the program reaches less youth,” says the 20-year old Ullyatt, a student at the University of Ottawa.

In the interim, Ullyatt says the four-month-old cabinet will focus on zero-dollar items included in its working plan that were approved Nov. 1 and which will likely be approved by council Nov. 14. These include the creation of a Web site for the cabinet and helping to organize next year’s Ottawa Capital Games, which will bring together youths, seniors and other groups in different sporting events.

“I wouldn’t bet on their getting the whole ($93,900),” says Bay Ward Coun. Alex Cullen, a member of the health, recreation and social services committee.

“(But) I’m certainly not going to dismiss their request out of hand.”

Cullen notes that, while the city’s upcoming budget will be around $2 billion, it will also be faced with unforeseen expenditures of roughly $50 million.

The cabinet’s working plan also earmarks $26,000 for the fourth annual Teen Expo – money already budgeted by the city’s people services department. In addition, it sets aside $4,500 for advertising, as well as $11,000 for a video and accompanying pamphlet about the cabinet and municipal politics to be shown to high school students.

The cabinet is also requesting $2,400 to send four of its members to the International Year of the Youth Conference next summer in Toronto.

But it is the Youth Initiative Program that remains broadest in scope and highest in cost.

“Fifty-thousand dollars is not very much for the whole city,” says Somerset Ward Coun. Elisabeth Arnold of the program.

But Arnold points out that the Ottawa Youth Cabinet has requested the most money of any of the 22 advisory committees thus far.

Moreover, the city already allocated $3.5 million for youth programs this year alone, in the form of one-time grants and continuous funding.

“The concern is that we not have two competing funding streams,” says Arnold.

Meetings between people services department and the cabinet are slated for around the middle of November, where the two groups will chart out how they can work together to set up and administer the cabinet’s funding, should it come to fruition.

“Yes (our request) is ambitious,” says Ullyatt. “But I think it can produce some tangible results that both the city and city council will feel.”