Powell River Community Forest has presented its 2024 dividend cheque to City of Powell River, amounting to $3,728,653.
Community forest president Greg Hemphill, at the August 21 city council meeting, said the 2024 dividend, added to the existing uncommitted money in the community forest reserve, likely results in the highest ever amount of money in the fund available for community grants.
“This amount in 2024 is a bit of a drop-off from 2023, which was a record year, but our board is just as proud of the decisions we made in the stretch of what has been economic uncertainty, which included the forest sector,” said Hemphill. “Fortunately, in 2023, we retained money in reserve to balance what was expected to be a tough 2024 year. That’s a big part of why we are able to produce a large cheque.
“Throughout the last two years a lot of great work was done to ensure we had options to respond, in very short time frames, to opportunities that presented themselves in a poor log market. A lot of credit goes to Chris Laing, our forest manager, for not only our high level of forest practices, but putting us in a position for financial success every year.”
Hemphill said the presentation to the city was not just a cheque; it represents an opportunity to support a lot of great projects, big and small, which move the community forward.
“We enjoy the interactions we have with community groups during the grant application process, and being results oriented, it’s very satisfying to us to track progress from the award of grants to completed projects,” said Hemphill. “You will see further in council’s agenda, additional community forest funding being proposed for two of the city’s previous grant projects. Powell River Community Forest supports those top-up grants outside the normal grant review process, because the projects are ready to proceed.”
Hemphill said the community forest is happy for the community groups that are receiving spring 2025 community forest grants, and is also disappointed for some of those groups that were recommended for grants, which city council did not approve. He said the community forest also understands some groups received partial grant funding, and that will require an alteration of plans.
“We spend quite a bit of time with applicants,” said Hemphill. “I want to make sure you know we are sorry for any expectations we may have created when our board reviewed the applications directly with you, especially those where we worked together to adjust the project scope and the grant amount requested.”
Hemphill said the community forest has to work through some issues on where it expects the grant process to go in the fall. He said the community forest would be making those considerations in the following weeks.
At the July 3 city council meeting, city council approved a Powell River Community Forest expenditure of $560,387.88 for the spring grants allocation.
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