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Heavy lifting!
Four-year-old Joselyn Jones (left) and Ryder Dingsdale, 3, weren’t having much luck trying to lift this pumpkin in a Westham Island field Monday morning.
PHOTO BY
CHUNG CHOW
Gamble isn’t paying off
Despite supporting expanded gaming, community groups have seen grants disappear BY
SANDOR GYARMATI
sgyarmati@delta-optimist.com
The loss of gaming money for all sorts of community groups, from service clubs to arts and environmental organizations, will have a devastating impact. That’s what Burns Bog Conservation Society president Eliza Olson had to say about the loss of provincial government grants organizations had depended on for years to provide services.
Olson, whose society is about to lose $30,000 in gaming money, equaling about 15 per cent of its budget, was recently named to the board of the B.C. Association for Charitable Gaming, which represents about 1,000 non-profit community service organizations. She was on hand with others in the association at a rally last Thursday on the steps of city hall in Vancouver, calling on council not to approve an application for a proposed casino until the province
restores the 33 per cent share of gaming revenues that had been promised in a memorandum of agreement signed a decade ago. The association, noting gaming revenues have continued to increase while charities have been shortchanged, issued an open letter to Housing and Social Development Minister Rich Coleman, the minister also responsible for gaming. It states B.C. charities actively supported and enabled the expansion of
gambling, mistakenly believing it would bring them a share of the proceeds. Earlier this year Coleman announced that arts, culture and sports groups for adults, along with environmental organizations, wouldn’t receive any grant money from the B.C. government. Only a few organizations will continue to receive funding, such as search and rescue groups or volunteer See GAMING page 3
FILE PHOTO
Eliza Olson says the loss of gaming grants will have a devastating impact on Delta organizations.