It was a simple but different kind of start at Tuesday’s West Kelowna council meeting.
For the first time, the grant-in-aid cheques given to local non-profit organizations were invited to council to be thanked in-person by Mayor Gord Milsom and the rest of the West Kelowna council.
The grant-in-aid’s are usually mailed to the recipients each year, said Chief Administrative Officer Jim Zaffino, but that council wanted to invite the organizations to meet in person this year.
Grant-in-aids are council-approved funding requests to local community groups that give West Kelowna valuable social and community services each year. Some of the organizations that were given funding were Telemark Nordic Club with $3000, Okanagan Boys and Girls Club with $5000, and $25,000 was given to the Westside Celebration Society.
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The funding was approved by council in January and goes to address some of the city’s larger needs. One of the larger looming needs in West Kelowna is the well-being of the city’s homeless; council approved the grant-in-aid request from the West Kelowna Shelter Society and invested $20,000 towards the Society’s plans for a continued lunch program and increasing the shelter time to seven days a week, three to four hours per day.
Council will continue to address the needs of the homeless in West Kelowna at the Committee of the Whole on Feb. 28.
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