The first Halifax County Community Grants were announced during today’s board of commissioners meeting.
In its budget for this fiscal year the board approved a $50,000 allocation to fund grants for various public purposes, such as support of museums and the arts, certain housing programs, public recreation facilities, social welfare programs, and programs for seniors.
Eight nonprofit corporations providing such programs in the county applied for a portion of the $50,000 pie, Deputy County Manager Christina Wells told the board.
"The Community Grants are separate from the county’s Recreation Partner’s Program. Instead of having them just send requests in for board consideration during budget deliberations, we converted the program to a community grants program,” Wells said. “It’s very similar to our Recreation Partners grants program.”
In switching to these type allocations, Wells told the board, “We were trying to increase transparency and to let the public clearly know about the ways in which county government can provide funding for local nonprofit corporations performing public work.”
Working with County Attorney Glynn Rollins, Wells said the county developed what she described as a good program.
Notification of the program was made at the end of September. The eight programs which applied “were very worthwhile and met all of our funding criteria,” she said. “The committee was able to provide some funding for all eight programs, which is wonderful. We may not have been able to fulfill their requests entirely, but we were able to provide some funding for all eight.”
With the exception of limited housing, the county received applications in every category. “I think the committee worked very hard and analyzed it down to the dollar and were able to come up with $50,000 to satisfy some portion of each project,” Wells said.
While he did vote in favor of the allocations and commended the program, Commissioner John said, “I would like to challenge the county to see if we can’t find more funding for the organizations. If you look at what was requested and what was allotted totally, it’s not even half of what these organizations were asking for.”
As a member of the Choanoke Area Development Association board, Smith said, “We serve four counties — Halifax, Northampton, Bertie and Hertford. Halifax makes the smallest donation among those counties which is the largest county and our population receives most of the benefits from CADA.”
Board Chair Vernon Bryant said the board would take that under advisement. “This program is new. At first we just had the Recreation Partners Program. This program is new so we can probably tweak it going forward. I think this is a good start. I see this as another good opportunity for nonprofits in our counties to utilize it if they meet certain criteria.”
Said Smith of CADA: “They will be receiving less this year than what they received last year and every other county has increased their donations toward CADA.”
Bryant said he commended the committee. “I’ve looked at this in detail and I’ve looked at the criteria that you used for selection.”
