OSOYOOS TIMES-September 2, 2009

By Paul Everest – Osoyoos Times

The Osoyoos Desert Centre’s 10th season in operation is ending on a sour note.
The Osoyoos Desert Society, which operates the centre, learned on Aug. 28 through a letter from the B.C. Ministry of Housing and Social Development dated Aug. 27 that a number of changes would be happening to the province’s community gaming grant program.
For the society, the changes mean that a $45,000 provincial grant for 2010 will not be coming.
The society was expecting the cheque this week.
Because the society had entered into an agreement with the province where it was guaranteed a $45,000 grant each year for three years beginning in 2009, a $45,000 grant for 2011 has also been cut.
Society President Roger Horton said the society has been applying for and receiving the grant for the past nine years and it is the Desert Centre’s largest source of funding.
“It’s the core of our operation,” he said, adding that the grant exceeds any amount of cash the centre brings in from tours.
“We’re absolutely devastated.”
The cash is used to cover the salary of the centre’s executive director, Denise Eastlick, as well as for paying guides and carrying out marketing.
Horton said the loss of the grant is part of the province’s efforts to scale back money allocations to various social, sports, arts and environmental programs and organizations.
Although, he added, environmental programs such as the Desert Centre are taking the brunt of the funding claw-backs.
“It’s like being fired on Christmas Eve without notice and with no severance,” Horton said, adding the society was given no prior notice it wouldn’t be receiving the cash for 2010.
Since it is a non-profit organization, the society has to maintain a neutral balance in its financial affairs.
That means, Horton said, that the grant, along with a donation from the Town of Osoyoos, is spent each year and there is nothing left in the society’s bank accounts for the centre’s 2010 season.
“If we’d known they were going to cancel at the beginning of the year, we wouldn’t have spent it.”
To make matters worse, Horton said, the centre made even less money this year because fewer visitors came through its doors than in 2008.
Greg Byron, the society’s treasurer, said the centre’s 2009 budget was $135,000 and operations were on target to meet that number.
At a meeting of the society’s board on the evening of Aug. 31, the decision was made to turn “lemons into lemonade,” Horton said.
Although the board looked at ways to cut costs for the centre— a difficult task since the centre runs as a “lean operation” to begin with— Horton said members focused on a way through this problem.
The society, with the leadership of the centre’s executive director, will look for alternative sources of funding for the centre through a membership drive and by approaching corporate sources and local governments.
Money will have to be raised quickly, Horton said, and cash leftover from the centre’s various fundraisers this year will be used to raise more money for the future.
To trim operational costs, the centre’s hours will be shortened for the month of September and the facility will close for the season earlier than usual, Horton said.
The centre normally closes at the end of the month.
Guided tours will also be discontinued for the rest of this season, he added, and the centre will have to forego some restoration work projects planned for this winter.
There will also have to be more reliance on volunteers, Horton said.
The society was formed in 1992 and the centre, a 27-hectare interpretive facility where people can learn about the South Okanagan’s desert ecology as well as habitat restoration and the conservation of local endangered ecosystems, opened in 1998.
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