Orillia’s city council has approved a four-year grant to help fund the Mariposa Folk Festival.
The festival will receive $33,500 in 2024, $32,000 in 2025, and $33,000 in 2026, with nearly $37,000 in rental payments and user fees being waived between 2023 and 2026.
The agreement follows a previous three-year memorandum of understanding (MOU) that saw the city grant $160,000 to the festival for 2019-2021, with the funds from 2021 deferred to 2022 due to COVID-19.
In 2022, the Mariposa Folk Festival brought $1.6 million in visitor spending to the city, noted city staff in a report presented at Monday's council meeting.
During the meeting, Coun. Ralph Cipolla questioned whether the city could grant a five-year MOU, which the Mariposa Folk Festival originally requested.
“The Mariposa Folk Festival … has brought millions of dollars of economic development to our community in tourism,” Cipolla said. “They're asking for five (years) because the new council has to be informed of what they do … so I would like to amend it to a five-year contract or agreement and the new council can renegotiate it if they want to.”
However, due to conditions of the Municipal Act, city staff recommended against such an agreement, as budgets for a year following a municipal election may only be set during that year.
“The five-year term is not strictly in compliance with sections 289 and 290 of the Municipal Act,” explained Amanpreet Sidhu, general manager of corporate services/city solicitor.
“Council’s interest will be better served with sticking to the strict interpretation of sections 289 and 290, which would allow for four-year funding as per the current term of council’s mandate.”
Coun. David Campbell successfully proposed an amendment to source the grant from the city’s municipal accommodation tax (MAT), which is created through a 4 per cent tax on local hotels, and similar accommodations, for use in promoting local tourism.
Originally, the grant was planned to be sourced from the general tax levy, with the waived fees coming from the MAT.
Michael Ladouceur, the city's interim director of business development, responded the MAT could indeed source the funds, but it would account for roughly 30 per cent of its funding.
“The whole point of (the MAT) is to bring tourism in and nothing does that more in Orillia than the Mariposa Folk Festival,” responded Campbell. “What I'm really looking for here is to save the taxpayers from funding it.”
Council agreed with Campbell’s proposed amendment.
Council’s decision is subject to ratification at its April 17 meeting.
