Tiny to explore ‘exciting’ special events through grant application
Mayor teases upcoming announcement in line with potential $25,000 grant application to Rural Economic Development stream; ‘cycling tours, craft beer festivals – there’s all sorts of things we can look at,’ says recreation director
Big events are on the horizon for Tiny Township, whether a successful grant application is approved or not.
At the recent regular meeting of council, Mayor Dave Evans teased residents with a glimpse of special events for the municipality by saying he would make an announcement at the next meeting of council.
The comments followed a question for Evans to chime in on a committee of the whole decision earlier in the month regarding the potential renaming of charity golf and pickleball events, as Evans had not been present for that discussion.
Instead, Evans deflected by hinting at what the Mayor’s Charity Golf Tournament working committee had discussed the day prior. “And not just pickleball, but there’s a number of things that our parks and recreation director and special events (Josh Pallas) are working on, and I think you will be very excited once you see it at the next meeting.”
The next agenda item involved a request by Pallas to access $25,000 for a grant application to the Rural Economic Development Program, Community Development Stream as a matching donation for a potential $50,000 development, if successful, toward a special events strategy for Tiny Township.
“Working with those (business, community, and third-party) groups, I get to hear the challenges first hand that they’re going through, and some of the successes as well,” said Pallas.
“I think it’s important that from a feasibility perspective, if we wish to include more special events for the township, that we start looking at how we recruit third-party events; whether that be cycling tours, craft beer festivals – there’s all sorts of things we can look at.”
Within the report, a 30 per cent increase to local business participation was targeted by 2027; the Farm Crawl / Taste of Tiny event was cited as just one example with a target of at least 18 participating farms and attraction of 250 attendees minimum. The strategy would look to bring in new third-party events for tourism, hospitality and seasonal employment opportunities, while establishing key performance indicators.
The request for $25,000 was to access an economic development reserve which had been established during last year’s budget deliberations, when Tiny pulled support from the four-municipality Economic Development Corporation of North Simcoe (since rebranded as Route 93) to use for their own purposes.
Said CAO Robert Lamb: “This (Rural Economic Development) program was put out by the province of Ontario, and it’s a wonderful program actually for municipalities just like ours, to be able to try to put in place new strategies that we’ve never had before.
“My understanding is that we should probably hear sometime in the first quarter of next year if we were successful,” said Lamb, “so then if we weren’t, council would still have time before we ratified the final budget to look at that $25,000 in reserve – whether there’s something else they wished for us to do with it.”
To conclude the discussion, Evans shared he was in favour of the request and added that it would tie into the unknown announcement he would introduce at the next meeting. The $25,000 request was approved by council shortly after
Derek Howard, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, MidlandToday.ca
