Richmond Municipal Council will be financially supporting two upcoming events after being approached by the Raising the Villages organization.
During last night’s regular monthly meeting in Arichat, council approved a recommendation from its committee-of-the-whole to provide $500 to the Wagmatcook Regional Well-Being Conference on March 26 and another $1,000 for the Richmond County Intergenerational Health Fair to be held in the municipality in early January. Council decided that both will be allocated from the municipal sponsorship budget.
District 3 Councillor Brian Marchand voted against the motion. During the committee-of-the-whole session, he said the municipality is “already spending a lot of money” to allocate resources to deal with problems like social isolation, housing, food insecurity, and fragmented service delivery.
While he was initially apprehensive of granting the money, District 5 Councillor Brent Sampson voted in favour of the motion after reviewing municipal finances and learning that Richmond County provided money to Raising the Villages for operational funding in the 2023-3024 budget year, but not the 2024-2025 budget year. Pointing to the disappointing findings of the Early Development Inventory, Warden Lois Landry said work that supports families, like that undertaken by Raising the Villages, is very important to the municipality.