New Westminster will be doling out $754,000 through its 2016 grants program.
The city distributes funds to a variety of organizations through its eight grant programs. Council has allocated these funds to the various grant programs: city partnership – $421,000; festivals – $210,000; community – $48,000; arts and culture – $20,000; heritage – $25,000; amateur sports – $35,000; environmental – $20,000; and child care – $40,000.
Once council approves the funding available to each of the grant programs, their respective committees will make recommendations about the specific grants to be awarded in 2016. In most cases, the committees received requests for considerably more funding than what’s available to disperse.
“The grant committees will be working over the next few weeks to look at the requests that have come in for 2016 grants,” said finance director Gary Holowatiuk. “Once they have had that opportunity to review the grant requests, the reports will be forwarded to council. They will make recommendations on what grants to award.”
Staff proposed the city’s overall grant budget be increased by $80,000 – approximately 11 per cent – in 2016. This reflects a $45,000 increase to the city partnership grant to address a one-time special grant that council approved for Fraser River Discovery Centre and other multi-year partnership grants approved for 2015 to 2017.
Holowatiuk noted that last year was the first year the city implemented a multi-year grant award, which enabled organizations to apply for a grant that would be reviewed every year for a three-year period. He said the city’s decision to award a multi-year grant to Discovery Centre has caused “some strain” at this time as to whether the city is able to meet its other funding commitments, unless it gets approval for additional funds.
In addition to the funds for Discovery Centre, council approved a staff recommendation to increase the festival grant program funding by $35,000, which includes $20,000 for in-kind city services related to the use of the city’s truck, trailer and chassis for organizations wishing to use the float, and $15,090 in cash and in-kind city services for the May Day program at Queen’s Park. Funds for May Day have been reallocated from another city budget.
The various grant committees will soon get to work and make recommendations to council about the grant recipients. The bulk of the funds come from property taxes, but some come from parking revenues (environmental and child-care grants are funded by Sunday parking meter revenues), an endowment fund ($113,500) and an Amateur Sports Trust Fund ($4,900).
