More than $1.1 million in external grants from Kane County's 2011 Riverboat Fund Program were allocated to about 50 entities, ranging from communities to homeless shelters, with the July 12 approval of the County Board.

 

The allocations that were authorized were pared from a list of more than 71 applications that, combined, totaled in excess of $3.3 million in requests.

"There is no easy way to do this process. Over the years, we've funded hundreds of great projects. But in the past three, four or five years, the funds available for allocation have decreased fairly substantially," said County Board member John Hoscheit, chairman of the subcommittee. Given the challenge of having to balance a growing number of grant requests with a diminishing amount of grant funds, "I think we did a real good job of spreading the funds around," he said.

 

"We had really diverse recipients geographically and by project," said Hoscheit. "Given the limitations, the size of the 2011 awards has been greatly reduced in an attempt at a reasonable allocation of funds. "These are not tax dollars. They are resources that are allocated to us by the Grand Victoria Foundation, of Elgin," he noted. More than $145,000 of the 2011 allocation came from forfeited grant funds that the subcommittee recommended be made available for distribution.

 

The Riverboat Fund Program was created in 1997. By agreement with owners of the Grand Victoria Casino in Elgin, an annual contribution of 7.5 percent of the net operating income from the riverboat casino is provided to Kane County. The amount of funding the county receives varies from year to year. Since its inception, tens of millions of dollars in grant funds that have been collected and allocated by the County Board for dozens of projects and programs countywide in the area6s of education, environment and economic development. The mission of the program is to serve as a financial aid for projects and programs that strengthen Kane County communities with emphasis on providing creative, long-term solutions to problems.

Favorable consideration is given to projects that, among other things, affect a broad segment of the county population and are relevant to overall county needs and available resources.