By Victoria Stone-Meadows
A Berwick-based artists’ group has been left out in the cold by Casey Council after its grant funding application rejected at the 11th hour.
City of Casey Council unanimously approved their 2017-’18 community grants recipients, with 81 groups sharing in $217,468 of grants this financial year.
Council originally received 106 applications for this year’s round of grants requesting $286,554.
The list of 81 final recipients was considered at a general council meeting on Tuesday 18 July, where Councillor Timothy Jackson altered the recommendation.
The new recommendation removed grant money being awarded to Berwick-based Provenance Artists Inc and allocated it to the Berwick Business Group instead.
Cr Jackson said removing Provenance Artists Inc from the list of grants was an unfortunate but necessary decision.
“Unfortunately we were at the budgeted level for the grants, therefore something had to come out for any additional funding to occur,” he said.
“In discussion with my ward partner Cr Susan Serey, we felt that it was only fair that if we wanted to add the funding for something in our ward then something in our ward had to come out.”
Cr Jackson said as much as he wanted to be able to award grants to many community groups, he had to take budget considerations into account.
“The Berwick Business Group hosted a wonderful Christmas event for the community and local business which I attended. This was attended by more than 2500 people,” he said.
“While it would be great to be able to fund every event and every community group, it just isn’t feasible to do so.”
“I hope that should further money become available, we may be able to fund the art group again.”
President of Provenance Artists Inc Calvin Bell was contacted for comment, but declined to do so until he had a chance to speak with the group’s committee of management.
The full list of successful community grant applicants will be notified by council in the coming weeks.
