The Town of Drayton Valley is starting to rethink how they hand out community grants.
At Town council’s April 13 meeting, council reviewed their applications for grants for the second quarter of 2022.
Based on feedback from council, administration took the three types of grants they hand out and put them altogether in one pot. This gave the Town a grand total of $30,000 in grants to hand out, with $20,000 remaining in 2022.
Council received $29,250 in requests for the second quarter. Administration also highlighted that more requests could probably be expected later this year.
After reviewing the applications, administration recommended a total of $8,350 in grants to be given out for the second quarter.
Councillor Amila Gammana wanted to know if they allocated the $20,000, would they be able to find additional funds. Administration replied they may be able to find $5000.
After looking over the spreadsheet laying out all the organizations asking for funding, Councillor Bill Ballas declared the whole process confusing.
“We are opening a Pandora’s Box. We are going beyond what our policy was meant to do,” said Ballas. “We were doing $5000 a quarter. It was working quite well. We knew what we had. We cannot keep making changes for every organization.”
Gammana suggested the policy could be revisited with the Governance and Priorities Committee to help streamline things.
Administration responded they are currently working on developing a scoring system to help narrow down eligibility, and they should have it ready to go for the third quarter grant applications.
Council decided to approve the recommended $8,350 in grants.
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