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Cash call for CBT funds tonight at Trail City Hall

Columbia Basin Trust will be hearing proposals tonight for the Community Initiatives Program at Trail City Hall in council chambers.

Talk about trying to fit a camel through the eye of a needle.

The Columbia Basin Trust Community Initiatives Program for Greater Trail is so over subscribed by prospective project applicants it would take almost three times the $302,071.86 allocated to the region to satisfy the requests for it.

That scenario holds true for Trail tonight when public airing of project proposals for the Community Initiatives Program takes place at City Hall in council chambers.

The event, in which project applicants provide insight into their applications to prove their worth for the Columbia Basin Trust’s (CBT) money, begins at 4 p.m. and is the last Greater Trail fling for CBT cash.

There will be 45 groups vying for $102,132 in Trail, with $285,269 in total requests coming from community groups and non-profit organizations for the 2012/13 year.

That means some tough decisions will have to be made by Trail city council, the decision makers on who gets what in Trail, said Sharon Toupin with the Regional District of Kootenay Boundary (RDKB).

“Once they have decided we (RDKB) disburse it to the groups,” said Toupin.

The Community Initiatives Program is funded by the CBT but is administered by the RDKB.

The Regional District Community Services Commission of Greater Trail decided the best course of action for 2012/13 was to split the total grant for Greater Trail amongst the local communities on the basis of population.

The villages of Fruitvale, Montrose and Warfield all received $30,000 for the current year — including some previous years’ unallocated amounts — with Area A and Area B also being handed $30,000.

Rossland received $44,770, with $1,490 in unallocated money, and the Beaver Valley picked up $90,000, with $2,249.86 from previous years added in.

CBT’s Community Initiative requires applicants to be either a non-profit registered society or sponsored by a registered society, with a project itself being some kind of capital project. The project cannot relieve any level of government of their responsibility.

Previous public presentations were made in Warfield, Montrose Hall (Area A), Genelle Hall (Area B) and Rossland.