Now that the city of Hamilton receives all the revenues from the Flamboro Downs slots, Flamborough councillor Margaret McCarthy says the city owes her city about half a million dollars.

McCarthy proposed the city create a trust fund for Flamborough that could provide a needed funding boost to local projects. The cost of the fund, which would operate similarly to the Taro Trust fund in the former municipality of Stoney Creek, would be about $500,000. She even had a motion prepared, supported by Mountain councillor Terry Whitehead, and ready to be introduced to council last week. She said she had at least five other councillors ready to endorse her proposal.

“It would be a trust fund for Flamborough,” she said.

Councillors were proposing during a special committee of the whole meeting last week a wish list of their high priority capital projects that could be funded from a special $5 million fund. Last year the city used the money to build a recreation facility in the downtown Beasley neighbourhood.

This isn’t the first time McCarthy has introduced such an idea to council.

In 2007, when politicians threatened to eliminate the area-rating of Flamboro’s slot revenue, McCarthy argued if Stoney Creek is allowed to keep its tipping fees from Philip Environmental (now called Newalta) after amalgamation, which goes towards the Taro Trust Fund, Flamborough should keep its casino revenue.

In 2007 $3.1 million out of the $4 million in total slot revenues were taken from Flamborough and used by the city and Ancaster to soften the expected higher taxes that year. The next year, the entire slot revenue that had been used to pay down the former town’s Borer’s Creek debt, was instead removed from the area-rating policy and dumped into the city’s general revenue stream. The move reduced taxes in Hamilton in 2008, but it caused Flamborough residents’ taxes to balloon to on average 10 per cent.

The Taro fund overseen by the Heritage Green Trust board of directors, the money is distributed to various organizations to help the local community.

McCarthy has argued that in 1999 Flamborough signed a written contract with the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Commission that suggests council can’t take the slot revenue away from the town without receiving approval from the gaming commissioner.

Whitehead, who initially opposed McCarthy’s idea, now supports the idea of providing some compensation to Flamborough. He said the money would by used for local improvement projects.

McCarthy’s motion wasn’t accepted by councillors last week. Instead, city staff will review the idea, along with a number of other proposed infrastructure projects. But Councillor Chad Collins urged staff to use the city’s own criteria for infrastructure projects as it reviews the requirements of the ideas. Under Collins suggestion, McCarthy’s proposal would not meet the city’s requirements.