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View Full Version : No Uptown Village "do" this year


Chief
04-18-2008, 05:13 AM
According to my morning Oregonian, the Uptown Village festival will not be held this year, because the group failed to receive some $30,000 worth of grant money to pay for it.

It seems to me that if you are planning something like that, you need to have a personal stake in it along with a permanent funding source. I would think that if this was really important, those businesses would have chipped in something; it's tax deductible at the very least/

Seeking out grants is a growth industry in Vancouver, and I'm surprized these business owners didn't come up with something. Maybe there wasn't as much enthusiasm for this event as it's been made out to be.

This parable is one that City leaders like Mayor Pollard, Time Leavitt, Larry Smith and others would do will to remember, given the City's penchant for seeking grants for everything under the sun, including the Boise Cascade site project. The time eventually comes when the Grants aren't there and you have to sink or swim on your own.

;)

Waterbuffalo
04-18-2008, 09:29 AM
May be it might be a little easier to swallow if each business chipped in 500 bucks from up and down the street? Use it as a street fair to show off the Uptown Village business?

Sounds like a good support the community and get things done.

Grants are not going to come from local government for this. Time to step up and pay for what you want to do instead of going to the federal level to beg.. (Want this to be understand that this comment applies not just to this event but a whole slew of things our community has been begging for years for. The new downtown PAC is going to be one of the things I think *MIGHT* be the next big sucking sound from the Federal government or local monied interests.)

Chief
04-18-2008, 05:50 PM
The article in $30K grant, and that killed the deal. It sounded to me like they had no other source of funding, so it must not have been that big of a priority.

Waterbuffalo
04-18-2008, 07:01 PM
Could that parade have come from ever dwindling Community Development Block Grants (CDBG) that are funnelled from the Feds to the City of Vancouver?

Chief
04-18-2008, 07:24 PM
I dunno...someone paid for this stuff, and it's obvious it ain't the Uptown Merchants...

::)

Waterbuffalo
04-19-2008, 08:47 AM
Yep some one did and some one is not longer interested in footing the bill. Would be curious to know who that was...