The Alberta 55 Plus Summer Games committee has made the final decision on which organizations will receive the approximately $340,000 in Legacy Grants, but they’re not ready to tell the general public.
Committee chair Gerry St. Pierre said the final decision was made at a meeting March 19, but he wouldn’t yet make that information public.
“Those organizations have been informed,” he said. “When the cheques are ready and we make the presentations, the public will be informed.”
Many organizations have already received letters indicating whether their grant application was successful, however, and St. Pierre acknowledged the information could get out into the community that way.
The decision to not yet release the information publicly, he said, was made to try to make sure everybody finds out at the same time.
The process for distributing the Legacy Grants was kicked off last fall, with application forms going out into the community and being submitted to the four individual municipalities — Westlock, Westlock County, Barrhead and the County of Barrhead.
Those municipalities made recommendations to the Legacy Committee as to how they would like to see the money distributed, and the committee in turn made final recommendations to the board for approval.
It will be up to the four participant municipalities to decide when and how they will make their announcements.
“Each municipality will make their presentations at the appropriate time, when they get their cheques and contact all the recipients,” St. Pierre said.
In addition, the Games board itself awarded some legacy grants directly to organizations involved with the event.
Games manager Marcie Mazurenko said the total amount of money available for the Legacy Grants in all four municipalities was $341,991. The games board itself directed $31,500 to some organizations that either didn’t apply or weren’t recommended by the municipalities, leaving each of the four municipalities about $77,000 to recommend for groups in their communities.
“The cheques aren’t cut quite yet, because our office assistant is away, but when the cheques are actually cut then each municipality will get in contact with their groups and give them out,” she said.
Westlock mayor Ralph Leriger said he’s aware of who the recipients are, and said letters to all applicants have already been made out.
“Once we know when the cheques will arrive, we’ll invite all the recipients to a council meeting,” he said.
Westlock County reeve Bud Massey said the specific process for announcing the grant recipients hasn’t been decided yet, but he expects it will come up for discussion at the April 22 council meeting.
