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SCRD authorizes Sprockids grant

Community Services Meeting

Directors at the Sunshine Coast Regional District corporate and administrative services committee authorized a grant of $6,700 to support the popular Sprockids bike park.

This grant is in addition to $10,000 from the SCRD 2015 budget. All of this is going towards a collaborative project between SCRD parks, Capilano University, Sprockids and local bike shops to improve and maintain the park.

The project aims to make the skills area of the park more user friendly, return the skills area to a desired service level, promote the use of the skills area for teaching, and gather community input for future enhancement of the skills area.

Rural grants

Directors had a discussion on improving its rural grant-in-aid program with one director expressing some strong feelings.

“The grant-in-aid and royal grant-in-aid process is, in my view, one of the saddest reflections of regional lack of cooperation,” said Sechelt Mayor Bruce Milne. “I understand the real, important need of individual areas to manage a portion of the grant-in-aid funds for their specific areas.”

According to Milne, there are several organizations that serve the entire Sunshine Coast, which are lacking a collective fund from all of the communities they cater to.

For example, he said Habitat for Humanity is based out of Sechelt and serves all of the Sunshine Coast, but only receives funding from the District of Sechelt.

“I actually was on the board when they first started to desegregate the grant-in-aid function so that individual areas could, in fact, raise funds from their areas and direct them to community acts,” said Milne. “I think that’s really important in the same way that municipalities have stand-alone organizations.”

Board vice chair Frank Mauro responded by saying that there is some cooperation between municipalities.

“I tend to agree with director Milne, that work can be done to improve [the grant-in-aid process],” Mauro said. “But I don’t think that we leave anyone out in the cold.”

The deadline to have grant-in-aid applications received is Wednesday, March 25. From March 30 through April 17, rural area directors will meet with advisory groups to discuss funding. Meetings will be scheduled in late April to discuss preliminary funding.

AVICC resolutions

One of the resolutions to be adopted at the regular board meeting on Feb. 12 will take a look at an analysis of costing and debt for BC Ferries compiled by area residents and ferry critics Jef Keighley and Jim Cleghorn. It will be presented on Feb. 12 at the Association of Vancouver Island and Coastal Com-munities board meeting, where a resolution needs to be adopted.

Anything to be reviewed at the regular board meeting on Feb. 12 must be submitted one week beforehand on Feb. 5.

The AVICC annual general meeting is to be held on April 10 through 12 in Courtenay. The deadline for submissions to the AGM is Feb. 23.