The village of Nakusp has received its first dividend cheque from the Nakusp and Area Community Forest (NACFOR).
The community forest began in 2008, and the village is the only shareholder in the company.
The village was recently presented with a cheque representing the dividends from 2013, in the amount of $582,064.
NACFOR and the village will be sitting down to discuss priorities for the village, and will determine how the money will go out.
“This money will be put in a legacy fund created by the village,” said mayor Karen Hamling. “It’s not going to little tiny projects, it will go to something that will help the community as a whole.”
It took five years for NACFOR to present a cheque because the company wanted to build up a reserve fund. Once that fund was built up, the dividend was presented to the village.
There was no dividend cheque in 2014, because the company’s costs exceeded its income.
With the company, income can vary from year to year. One year, they might not do a lot of logging, but they still have management and maintenance costs.
“We logged a lot in 2013, so we made quite a bit of money, but in 2014, we had to do a lot of field work to replace the volume and we didn’t log as much, so we didn’t make as much,” said Kathy Smith, president of NACFOR.
No decision has been made on what the funding will go toward, but the village is in the process of creating a strategic plan, with priorities on the next four years on where it would like to work within the community. The plan and priorities will be taken into consideration, along with a discussion with the board members of NACFOR to see if there are other priorities that can be offered up.