The Open Streets festival was a hit in Windsor in 2016 -- and the city is looking to pull off another one in 2017 to coincide with the Windsor’s 125th birthday and Canada’s 150 celebrations.

But many members of council took exception with administration's request for a funding request for a temporary project manager.

Last year, the two Open Streets pilot events were well attended, with main streets closed down to allow for free-flowing pedestrian and bicycle traffic. The two events cost the city roughly $50,000 and were executed without hiring a temporary manager.

This year, the city received provincial grant funding for one event this year -- to the tune of $55,000. Administration requested an additional temporary manager to help plan this year’s event, at a cost of roughly $20-30,000, to be funded from the budget stabilization reserve.

CAO Onorio Colucci says the event can't be properly organized without an extra staffer – without jeopardizing the other work done by the planning department.

“This was a new initiative, it took months to plan it properly, and so it isn’t something we can do on the side of the desk over a week where we can do it with existing resources,” he said.

Coun. Rino Bortolin said the biggest complaint from last year’s festivals was there they weren’t long enough and they were too infrequent. He’d like to see council treat the funding of Open Streets like it does for other municipally funded events.

“We spend that much on supporting different events, we have a sports tourism officer that supported the Memorial Cup,” said Coun. Rino Bortolin. “As a municipal event, as a civic event, this has been a huge, huge success.”

Though everyone around the table supports the event, councillors were split on why they were funding a new position when it was done in-house last year.

“If we were able to do it last year without this position, what’s changed?” mused Coun. Fred Francis, who says council needs to be lean and mean at times to ensure spending doesn’t run out of control.

The report also didn’t indicate how much spending would be required to pay the temporary staffer, which is why Francis’ motion capped spending on the position at $30,000.

“If we can save the taxpayer money, that’s what we‘re supposed to do,” Francis said. “We all want to do it, but we have to do it in a reasonable, balanced way.”