Powell River Festival of the Performing Arts requests qathet Regional District funds

qathet Regional District’s finance committee will be recommending a grant-in-aid of $750 for Powell River Festival of the Performing Arts.

During discussion on the recommendation at the January 22 finance committee meeting, Electoral Area B director Mark Gisborne said his understanding is that regional districts give out their grants in August, so during that time between the grant allocation and August, the regional district has to take out a loan and pay interest on it.

“I’m wondering why we are being asked to provide the funding in January rather than providing it in August,” said Gisborne. “The festival does occur in February but they appear to have some fairly strong reserves. I’m wondering if it would be beneficial for the regional district to provide the funding a little bit later.”

Regional district manager of financial services Linda Greenan said the reason the regional district wants to pay it out in January is simply because the festival occurs in February. She said the regional district has a revenue anticipation bylaw that allows for a cash flow until the requisition comes in.

“That’s really up to the board,” she said. “If you’d rather pay it out later, you can, we’ve just timed it so they can have money for the festival.”

Chief administrative officer Al Radke said it was prudent to understand that the short-term borrowing is to make sure the regional district has cash flow, period.

“Whether or not this application for this amount of money they are asking for is granted, that isn’t going to cause us grief for that short-term borrowing because we have to do it anyway to carry ourselves,” said Radke. “It’s really not a major point of contention in my mind. We are proposing that they get paid so they can have the funds in time for their festival.”

Gisborne said in his conversations with some of the directors of the festival, they did not seem to be in too much of a rush for funds. He said $750 might not make much of a difference on the regional district end, but he was thinking about the bigger picture about how the regional district does its grants-in-aid.

“For this year I’m fine with it, but I’m thinking in the future, if the society is comfortable with it, that we provide the funds in August,” said Gisborne.

Committee chair George Doubt said he thinks he heard the answer from staff that the money is provided as a convenience for the organization so it has the cash in hand when the event is organized.

“It doesn’t really impact on the borrowing the regional district does in any way,” said Doubt.

The finance committee carried the recommendation to send the matter to the regional board.