There’s an old saying that “you play the hand you were dealt.” But if you’re lucky, sometimes you get another card.

For several local nonprofits, they received that extra card and in the end, had a winning hand.

During the Aug. 10, Sedona City Council meeting, the distributing of $150,000 through the city’s small grants program was revisited. After nearly two-and-a-half hours of discussion on July 12, council voted 5-1 to postpone allocating money through the city’s small grants fund until Wednesday’s meeting.

Council expressed concern during that July meeting with the process of allocating the funds and questioned why some past recipients received nothing as recommended by the citizen grant committee.

“The guidelines we’re working on are about six years old and things have changed,” grant committee chairwoman Stephanie Giesbrecht said during last month’s meeting. “Not only has the city changed but so has the council, its priorities, where we’re headed and very much to the point, when it comes to the decision-making process, the responsibility of city officers when spending public money.”

Like council, the committee also had concerns with the vetting process and all agreed it needs to be revamped for next year. In the meantime, council decided to leave the allocation amounts as recommended by the committee. However, the committee only recommended that $128,400 of the $150,000 be granted, leaving $21,600. It was that remaining money council divvied up during last week’s meeting. In addition, the Humane Society of Sedona voluntarily reduced its request from $3,000 [which was approved by the committee] to $500. The difference was passed onto other organizations.

According to a city report, the small grants program was created in order to encourage and fund activities, programs, or events developed by 501(c)(3) organizations that serve a public purpose, provide a fair return value to the city, and are consistent with the city’s funding priorities. Programs, activities or events that may be funded include those that enhance the city’s commitment to arts and culture, civic and community service that foster the well-being and prosperity of the city and its residents.

A citizen committee, whose efforts were praised by council several times, was formed to go through the grant applications and make recommendations to the council. Twenty-six grant applications were received totaling $253,900 in requests for the categories of Arts & Culture, Community Building and Economic Stimulation.

The report states that the chairwoman of the work group vetted the grant applications for completeness, reproduced and distributed the applicants to the reviewers, led the evaluation process, scheduled the applicant interviews, and summarized committee recommendations for grant awards to the city.

Of those 26 applicants, the committee recommended that eight receive no funding. Those were the ones council addressed first. But prior to making any decisions, representatives from organizations that wanted to plead their case were given the opportunity to do so.

“One of my concerns when I originally saw this list was that there were so many zeros for funding recommendation,” Mayor Sandy Moriarty said, adding that she had listened to the committee’s deliberations on tape. “I believe there are reasons to revisit some of these zeros.”

Council voted in favor of granting the following to those organizations that had been denied funding:

• Cornucopia Community Advocates — $1,500
• Rotary Club of Sedona Red Rocks — $4,000, for Oktoberfest
• Sedona Arts Center’s Artist-in-Residence program — $2,000
• Sedona Community Food Bank — $9,300 for new refrigeration

Those receiving no funding included Keep Sedona Beautiful, Red Rocks Music Festival, Sedona Historical Society for new LED lighting at the museum and Sedona Marathon. In the case of the marathon, council members had concerns that while the Sedona Chamber of Commerce owns the marathon, beginning last year they have brought in an outside group to produce it. Plus, council felt funding should come from the chamber’s product development fund.

Another concern brought up by Councilwoman Jessica Williamson was that on the committee’s recommendation recordings, the term “weening off” was often used in regard to those organizations that apply every year for funding. Council felt this was not a consideration that should be made by the committee. Because of that, those organizations in which that term was used in the committee’s report received additional funding. The Sedona International Film Festival’s recommended amount of $20,000 was increased to $23,000, Hummingbird Festival went from $4,000 to $5,000 and Plein Air Festival from $7,000 to $10,000.

“I will absolutely take responsibility for the fact there was ‘weening,’” Giesbrecht said. “It never even occurred to me because it was something over the course of having the council’s feedback over a number of years that, ‘Why are we still funding these organizations that can obviously, through their financial engines, make it on their own?’ That has been a theme of conversation coming from the council for the last three years. I think that kind of got incorporated into those guidelines.”