CBT / Rossland Dole it Out -$44,740 Awarded to Community Groups
By Andrew Zwicker
In an age of bailouts, economic stimulus packages and billions upon billions of public dollars going to big failing corporations, The Telegraph is happy to report that a number of worthy local community groups, the kind that provide the sort of real community building that no bailout package could ever offer, are now at least somewhat flush with cash. This week, as part of the Columbia Basin Trust’s largest and longest running program, Rossland City Council awarded Rossland’s portion ($44,740) of the overall $3.3 million Community Initiatives Program budget.
Funds for the program are allocated on a per capita funding formula and are distributed to the city of Rossland among other delivery partners. Decision making on how to disburse the funds is community-based which left council members with six days to form a criteria evaluation committee, go over the 31 applications and decided how much to award to each group. At the previous Tuesday’s council meeting, an evaluation criteria committee of Councillors Charlton, Smith and Moore was established to put a system in place to dole out the awarded money.
This Monday, the 20th of April, that committee brought forth two options of awarding the grant money. Option 2 was selected. It involved a three step process. First, council went through each application and voted whether or not they wished to award money to them, not considering amounts. Each applicant that received four or more of a possible seven votes would receive at least some funding, those with fewer than four votes would receive nothing. Through the first round seven groups received no funding (including BEAKS which had requested $8,703 of an $18,138 total budget for bird rescue fees and medical needs).
Having pared the list down to 25 applicants, each councillor proposed an allocation amount for each applicant totally $44,770. Each councillor’s data was then entered into a spreadsheet which calculated the average of all data. The resulting dollar amount was awarded to each group.
Councillors had a difficult task in paring down the $109,000 requested in the applications to the $44,770 available. The largest single recipient was the Visions for Small School / RSS Dance Academy who received $3,979 of their requested $7,293 towards purchasing a portable flooring system.
“Right now we do not have a floor that is adequate for dancers in this area. We would like to install a permanent flooring into the Rossland high school and to encourage the program, and maybe help save Rossland high school,” said the representative for Kootenay Danceworks in their final presentation to council.
Rossland Search and Rescue received the second highest award, $3,871 of a requested $7,500 to be put toward the ground search and rescue program. The fully volunteer 15 member group relies largely on grants and donations cover the area from the border, north to Genelle, and west to Grand Forks.
“The reason we have to continually keep funding is that due to our non-static membership, we have to continually keep training people, updating our members that are here full time. We have to keep up with new technology and regulatory advances,” said the Search and Rescue representative. “Our service is valuable and beneficial to the community, to the rural area as well as visitors that come in. Someone gets on the back side of White Wolf Ridge, their car is still in the parking lot at 5:00 PM in the evening, and it’s nice to know that there is someone going to go out, find them and bring them home healthy.”
The arts and culture scene in Rossland got a good injection of cash, including the Rossland Museum ($2,900), Rossland Council for Arts and Culture ($2,643), Pottery Association ($2,429), and Gold Fever Follies ($2,264).
Environmental initiatives also showed well, with Greener Footprints receiving $2,469, the Columbia Basin Environmental Network $2,224 and the Kootenay Food Strategy receiving $1,944.
See attached table for full results of the grant awards.
APPLICANT Budget Request Award Votes Totals $ 44,770 Visions small schools/RSS dance acd $7,293 $ 7,293 $ 3,979 7 Rossland search and rescue $50,000 $ 7,500 $ 3,871 7 Rossland museum
$10,622 $ 2,900 6 Black Jack $20,845 $ 12,995 $ 2,762 7 RCAC $3,000 $ 3,000 $ 2,643 7 Greener Footprints $86,136 $ 11,993 $ 2,469 5 Rossland Pottery assoc $3,562 $ 3,000 $ 2,429 7 Rossland gold fever follies $12,980 $ 2,310 $ 2,264 7 Columbia Basin Enviro Netwk $122,705 $ 2,690 $ 2,224 7 Rossland winter carnival $15,259 $ 4,900 $ 2,100 6 West Kootenay PARTY $43,390 $ 3,000 $ 1,990 5 Career Dev Services $1,118,440 $ 3,000 $ 1,950 6 Kootenay Food strategy $5,500 $ 5,500 $ 1,944 5 Rossland Art Club seniors #45 $1,800 $ 1,800 $ 1,686 6 Rossland radio coop $3,000 $ 3,000 $ 1,571 5 Rossland Resort/spring wingding $4,470 $ 2,915 $ 1,404 4 Tourism Rossland $1,453 $ 1,453 $ 1,180 6 BC SPCA $10,000 $ 1,500 $ 1,000 6 Kutenai Art Therapy $6,180 $ 5,580 $ 761 4 Koot Columbia Edu heritage foundation $5,650 $ 890 $ 743 6 Greater Trail Skills Centre $7,100 $ 1,000 $ 714 5 KAST $18,000 $ 1,000 $ 714 4 Trail Horsemens Soc $5,503 $ 1,000 $ 623 6 Greater trail comm Justice society $3,000 $ 510 $ 434 7 Nelson carshare $9,100 $ 600 $ 414 5 BEAKS $18,138 $ 8,703 $ – 3 Beaver valley Golf Champion lakes golf $32,500 $ 500 $ – 0 Canadian Cancer Society $28,630 $ 2,000 $ – 2 Comm Futures Dev Corp $10,000 $ 1,450 $ – 2 Rossland Interact $28,800 $28,800 $ – 0 Tadanac Tennis $13,743 $ 2,707 $ – 0 Targa Canada West $500,000 $ 1,000 $ – 0
