Mosier Council adopts formal appropriations policy to standardize small grants and reporting

The Mosier City Council on April 6 adopted a City Appropriations Policy intended to standardize how the city evaluates and monitors small local grants and donations.

The council voted unanimously to approve the policy after community member MaryLou Perry, who said she has done appropriations work for the State of Oregon, presented a draft and urged several wording and process changes. Perry recommended replacing the term “entity” with “organization” to reflect that not all local groups are 501(c)(3) nonprofits and suggested adding application questions and an end-of-cycle reporting requirement so recipients describe how funds were used. “If you have received funding in the past, let us know how it was used,” Perry said during her presentation.

Perry provided examples to help define “small/local organization,” including listed annual budgets: The Grange ($18,000), Mosier Seniors ($7,500), Mosier Library ($450), Home at Last (more than $10,000) and Mosier School (about $1,000,000). She also noted that Mosier’s long-standing $300 annual donation to the Senior Center or Library is equivalent to about $882 in 2016 dollars under the draft’s inflation adjustment discussion.

Councilors discussed practical application details: whether to require a cover letter, expanding form text boxes, and adding a question asking applicants if they had previously received city funds and how those funds benefited the organization and the Mosier community. Council President Emily Reed moved to adopt the policy with the stated changes; Councilor Bill Akin seconded. The motion passed unanimously.

Council directed staff to create the revised Appropriations application form incorporating the approved changes and thanked Perry for drafting the policy. The item will result in a staff task to publish the application form and begin using the standardized review and reporting process for small grants.