Public Commons

Part of 2012

Hello Glen,

As of Sunday August 5, CELOS will no longer be handling the Dufferin Grove finances. I have been told once too often that I have no business speaking to city staff about any park-related matter. It is very clear that there is no stable acknowledgement by the current management of the long-time partnership that began in 1993 between community people and the City.

Fortunately, the Dufferin Grove PT staff have been running the finances for a long time already and they will not have to learn new skills. They already keep an account of every penny of donations, and do the ordering and buying of food and supplies for the park cafes and other food-supported programs. We have been forced to find non-city contract workers to fill the holes caused by management unpreparedness. The donation funds used for these contracts are also carefully and publicly documented. Petty cash and the funds needed for groceries and other park supplies are well regulated and accounted for, and the staff are also used to delivering the surplus funds to McCormick.

So the current PT staff have the necessary skills to bridge the gap caused by the withdrawal of CELOS' financial involvement. Since there has finally been some movement on interviewing new PT city staff, hopefully the need to compensate for the absence of PT hiring since 2011, with contracts of over $38,000 so far this year, will soon be over. I would like to suggest that the required mandatory training can be offered to all newly hired PT staff immediately, not requiring new staff to wait until the end of the month for the various training courses.

I look forward to having more time now to work through the FOI Ward 18 budget. Last week I asked Sofia some budget-related questions that have not been acknowledged. Are my questions to her perhaps part of the budget-related clarifications that you said you'll shortly be sending to me? Let me know.

I'll be bringing $500 for the July campfire donations and the June transfer cheque for $5085.27 to McCormick when it reopens, without waiting for an acknowledgment any longer. The final July transfer accounting is almost done; a few more invoices still have to come in, and then that final cheque will be ready to transfer as well.

P.s. I'm also bringing $142.50 pizza day money from the summer camp of the Islamic Information and Da'wah Centre.