WENTWORTH CREEK, N.S. — After West Hants council nixed the request to provide $10,000 in funds to the Happy Community Project, citing the need to work with Windsor council on it, the coordinating committee, which is dealing with the consolidation of the two units, funded it instead.
West Hants Warden Abraham Zebian brought up the request to the Windsor West Hants Coordinating Committee during its regular meeting on Feb. 25.
The recommendation was supported unanimously by members of the committee. The $10,000 will come out of the committee’s budget, which is funded by the provincial Department of Municipal Affairs.
This means that the funding request defeated by West Hants council and brought forward to the Town of Windsor for consideration are essentially moot.
West Hants’ chief administration officer Martin Laycock said the funding proposal was to leverage $50,000 from the Department of Communities, Culture and Heritage.
“This is something that Barry Braun approached me with back in November, and I helped him with developing this proposal. It’s all his work. I just did a review of it,” Laycock said. “It’s to help bridge the gap between the rural and urban areas of Windsor and West Hants through a grassroots approach, building social capital and trying to sustain community-based development in the region.”
Zebian made the motion to the committee, saying the Happy Community Project is a great initiative for the region as a whole.
“It’s a great group of people… and what they’ve done is bring out all of the great volunteers pretty much out of the woodwork to come out and create the gardens and the breakfasts and the events and the functions that are going on,” Zebian said. “I think West Hants council felt that it was more of a dual discussion between Windsor and West Hants, so they felt it should come to the coordinating committee so that it would be more thoroughly represented by both councils.”
Deputy Mayor Laurie Murley asked Windsor CAO Louis Coutinho for details on Windsor’s position on the matter. Coutinho said Windsor council was generally supportive, although council wanted to find a way to cost share the funding with West Hants.
Laycock said he would report back to the committee on whether or not provincial funding comes through.
There is no guarantee that the $10,000 commitment from the coordinating committee will unlock $50,000 in funds from the province.
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Braun, the founder of the Happy Community Project, said he was thrilled to hear the news.
“We’ve been working really, really hard for two years with a little bit of financial support from the business community, but no financial support from the municipal governments up until now,” Braun said. “That’s made it really hard.”
Braun said he’s had to spend money out-of-pocket and has worked 60-hour weeks at times to keep the organization afloat.
“This will help the Happy Community Project be delivered the way it should be,” he said. “I think it shows that people are starting to realize that what we do is special.”
The budget in the Happy Community Project’s funding proposal to West Hants council allocated $15,680 for a community leader, $4,000 would also be set aside for community leader training, and $8,000 was slated for overhead costs, including insurance, telephone, bookkeeping and other miscellaneous costs.
Braun said the organization needs the support of other professionals besides himself.
“From the very beginning my goal for this has been something that is scalable, that can happen anywhere in the world,” he said. “There are people within the community that we can train to lead the Happy Community Project so that it is self-sustainable.”
Braun said he plans to stay involved in the organization as the founder.
After pitching why West Hants council should fund the Happy Community Project during a meeting of committee of the whole meeting on Jan. 22, councillors began questioning the salary component of the request. Several councillors indicated they couldn’t support the funding request as other volunteers that head local organizations don’t get paid.
“I have put my heart and soul in this. I have put my own money into this,” Braun said at the time. “At this point in time, I have personally invested $8,000 of my own personal money for this community to have what it’s got, and I’m done.”
“If you say no to me today, I am done. I’m done with the Happy Community Project in Windsor. I’m probably done with the Happy Community Project because I just have not got the energy in me to hold all the balls that I hold by myself anymore. I won’t do it.”
Despite West Hants voting to not fund the project, the coordinating committee ultimately approved the funding.
~ with files from Carole Morris-Underhill
