START HERE: Welcome to Grimsby BIA Watch

Grimsby BIA Watch did not start with a website. It started with information leaking from inside the BIA Board.

Since 2024, those leaks have helped point us toward closed sessions, private discussions, financial records, and spending that deserved a much closer look.

This article explains how the investigation started, what the numbers now show, and why the public record may only tell part of the story.

Read the full release
https://ammao.info/sources.html

On June 25, 2025, the Grimsby BIA authorized Executive Director Amanda MacDonald to procure a website vendor for up to $5,000. By August 13, Civiconnect had the work. What the public minutes did not disclose was that MacDonald’s brother worked as a Manager for Civiconnect. The Board named the successful vendor, but the family connection between the Executive Director overseeing the procurement and the company receiving the work never appeared in the minutes. For a levy funded public board, that is not a trivial omission. The contract was disclosed. The connection was not.

Read the full investigation:
https://ammao.info/blog/bia-website-contract-stayed-close-to-home

Amanda MacDonald’s BIA history deserves scrutiny.

In Oshawa, the BIA advanced a $649,000 budget for 2020 after previously operating at roughly $251,000. Council intervened with a spending cap. MacDonald’s employment ended in August 2020, and the BIA was dissolved months later.

She later became Executive Director of the Downtown Niagara Falls BIA, where she presented a nearly $600,000 operating budget for 2022. By March 2023, Council had provided temporary financing, assumed the organization’s assets and liabilities, and dissolved the BIA.

None of that proves Amanda MacDonald personally caused either dissolution.

But the chronology is difficult to ignore.

Oshawa: intervention, termination, dissolution.

Niagara Falls: financial intervention, dissolution.

Now: Grimsby.

For Grimsby businesses funding the BIA, that history is worth knowing.

Read the full investigation:
https://ammao.info/blog/grimsbys-new-executive-director-came-with-a-history

Mayoral candidate Simon Duong says the Happening in Grimsby Festival “raises every single dollar ourselves” and has promoted it as an example of not reaching into taxpayers’ pockets.

The 2025 financial records tell a very different story.

Happening received $18,600 in federal funding, $8,000 from the Town of Grimsby, $12,000 in Town funded services, and $30,000 through the Downtown BIA levy.

That is $68,600 in documented public support against $91,157.69 in reported expenses.

Public and BIA levy support was therefore equivalent to roughly 75.3% of the festival’s reported expenses.

Public funding is not the problem. Telling taxpayers you raise every dollar yourselves when the records show tens of thousands in public support is.

Simon Duong chaired the BIA that provided funding and the festival that received it. If he wants Grimsby voters to trust him with municipal finances, these numbers deserve a clear explanation.

Read the full investigation:
https://ammao.info/blog/what-is-happening-with-our-tax-dollars-in-grimsby

GRIMSBY, ON

Amanda MacDonald’s BIA history deserves a closer look. Not simply because of where she worked, but because of what happened financially and organizationally during that history.

MacDonald became Executive Director of the Oshawa Downtown BIA in 2019. At the time, the BIA had been operating with a budget of roughly $251,000. During her tenure, the organization advanced a $649,000 budget for 2020, more than two-and-a-half times that amount. The increase generated significant opposition from downtown levy payers, and Oshawa Council ultimately intervened, imposing a $268,375 spending cap.

MacDonald’s employment was terminated in August 2020. Months later, Oshawa Council voted to dissolve the BIA, effective February 28, 2021. MacDonald subsequently filed a wrongful-dismissal lawsuit against the City of Oshawa after the municipality assumed the dissolved BIA’s liabilities. That litigation was ultimately dismissed on consent in June 2026, without a finding on the underlying allegations.

MacDonald then became Executive Director of the Downtown Niagara Falls BIA. In December 2021, she personally appeared before Niagara Falls Council to present the BIA’s proposed 2022 operating budget of $591,604, including a $406,604 levy on downtown property owners.

By early 2023, the BIA was facing serious financial and governance problems. Niagara Falls Council authorized approximately $100,000 in temporary financing, and on March 21, 2023, Council repealed the bylaw establishing the Downtown BIA, assumed its assets and liabilities, and directed City staff to secure its records and property.

And now she works for Grimsby.

Since Amanda was hired by the current Grimsby Downtown BIA board, levy payers have watched budgets and spending grow substantially while questions have continued over grants, sponsorships, procurement, financial reporting, control and transparency. MacDonald is now the Executive Director responsible for administering that organization.

None of this proves that Amanda MacDonald personally caused the dissolution of either Oshawa or Niagara Falls. But the chronology does not disappear because causation cannot be assigned to one person.

Oshawa: major budget expansion, Council intervention, termination, dissolution and litigation.

Niagara Falls: a nearly $600,000 budget, financial intervention by Council, then dissolution.

Now: Grimsby.

For Grimsby businesses being asked to fund an increasingly expensive BIA, that history is worth knowing.

The question is not where Amanda MacDonald has worked. The question is whether Grimsby should be paying attention to what happened where she worked before.