Committee of the Whole has decided not to accept any new funding requests for this year’s community and special events and tourism grants.
With funding requests coming in over budget and after the budget has been approved, members decided to stick to the status quo of funding that was given out last year.
Before deliberations, the community grants budget for 2017 sat at $36,600, the amount that was handed out last year. Requests for funding however came in at $50,600.
It was a similar scenario for the special events and tourism grants, with $21,400 being budgeted, but requests topping that at $21,750.
With so much to cut from the community grants requests, committee members chose to only give out the same amounts to the same organizations from 2016 that also requested funding for this year. The highest grant requested was that of the Prescott Youth Centre for $7,000. A total of 11 other funding requests were filled.
Councillor Fraser Laschinger withdrew the Prescott Heritage Committee’s request from the special events and tourism grants for $1,000, realizing his group did not meet the qualifications needed to request funding in the first place. The Friends of the Windmill group were the only organization to not resubmit their funding request for special events and tourism from 2016, which was a request of $500.
After both those deductions, the committee approved a total of $18,000 in special events and tourism funding for 2017. The St. Lawrence Shakespeare Festival will be taking $17,500 of that, with the last $500 going to the Grenville Historical Society.
Both Mayor Brett Todd and Laschinger were in favour of fulfilling all the requests, not wanting to pit any local organizations against each other. They also acknowledged that every single organization that submitted a request plays a key role in the community and is worthy of the funding. They were out voted by the rest of the committee though, with obligations to stay within the budget.
The Committee of the Whole agreed for 2018 to have all grant applications tallied before budget deliberations finish, as to all as many groups funding as possible.