The City of Prince George will take a look at what to do with the remaining $10,000 in the 2025 grant budget.
During a Committee of the Whole meeting, City Council passed a motion to decline a proposed $20,000 ($10,000 in 2025, $10,000 in 2026) funding allocation for the Exploration Place.
“As per this report, Administration is proposing that the adjudication committee review the eligible organizations who were not successful in grant cycle funding, for this grant cycle, and pick essentially the next organization in line to receive the remaining $10,000, or I should say, the next organizations, if it’s smaller amounts to make up the total of $10,000,” said Director of Civic Facilities and Events Andy Beesley.
“If Council approves this, the results of this process would be brought back to Council in a future report.”
Councillor Cori Ramsay asked if the Exploration Place would be included in the eligible but previously declined applications.
“I think it would be interesting to see how they compared,” she said.
“I supported the denial of that because I had some concerns about the grant funding going into the line of credit, I didn’t give them the opportunity to perhaps divert that to somewhere else.”
Ramsay put forward an amendment to the main motion to include Exploration Place in the eligible, but declined applications.
Councillor Brian Skakun said he had concerns about Exploration Place being ‘put back on top of the list.”
“The way I see it, the adjudication committee did go through a very robust, very complicated adjudication process, and Exploration Place would therefore be the next in line,” Beesley responded.
“Unless I receive other direction from Council, my assumption is that Exploration Place, it’s the same agency so they would still be the next in line to receive this.”
“I honestly don’t think it’s fair to the 13 other groups that potentially could be getting the funding,” Skakun said.
“We just dealt with a report at the Regional District last week about a lot of the challenges Exploration Place is having, and I’m hoping they’re on the right track, I’m having difficulty with this one.”
Ramsay’s amendment passed with Skakun opposed, while the main motion passed with Skakun and Mayor Simon Yu opposed.
An interdepartmental working group will review previous applicants and award the remaining $10,000 to the organization that best fits the grant criteria.
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