City awards Community Action Grants to local organizations

The City of Bethel’s Community Action Grant (CAG) Technical Review Board met on June 12th, 2019 to decide which organizations would be receiving the next round of CAG awards.

The CAG board chose the Bethel Wrestling Club and the Friends of the Kuskokwim Consortium Library 2019 Summer Reading Program for the Year 2/Quarter 2 awards.

Each applicant is scored and the CAG board has an opportunity to ask them questions about their applications. Incomplete applications are not able to be processed.

The CAG board recommended awarding $5,000 to the Bethel Wrestling Club to help cover costs associated with holding a wrestling summer camp in 2019. The Summer Reading Program’s recommended award was $6,000 for program costs associated with STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) programming and book giveaways.

Action Memorandum 19-36 was introduced by Acting City Manager Bill Howell that would authorize and approve city administration to issue checks to the CAG awardees based on the CAG Committee’s work on scoring applications and deciding how much to award each applicant.

The CAG Committee accepted two applications received during the open application period from May 1, 2019 to May 30, 2019. The total funding recommendation amount is in the FY 2019 budget and available for distribution.

The City of Bethel established the Community Action Grant Program to allow community and individuals the request financial support for programs or events that contribute to the health, welfare, and overall quality of life for residents of Bethel, especially its most vulnerable populations.

Funding for the program comes from 20% of the Alcohol Tax collected by the City. The Community Action Grant Technical Review Board was created to develop a process to solicit grant applications, review them, and recommend funding selections to City Council.

Council voted unanimously to approve Action Memo 19-36.

Also at the June 12th CAG committee meeting, board member Grady Deaton was elected as Chairman, and council representative Leif Albertson was elected as Vice Chairman for the Community Action Grant committee.