Tonight was a West Area Committee meeting. This is a committee made up of Councillors from the West of the Vale covering the area from Buscot to Ashbury and Bourton to Buckland, the main purpose of the meeting is to give grants to local community groups. This is one of the best and also worst parts of being a councillor. On the plus side you can really make a difference to important local community projects. None of them will make headlines but to the communities they serve they are really appreciated. Some of the applications we had last night were for new disabled toilets for a village hall, money towards a community bus, and a grant towards street cleaning in smaller parishes.There is however a downside, there simply isn't enough money to go round. This isn't just a problem cause by the recession, it is the way the system is structured. In a previous incarnation as Shadow Cabinet Member for Finance, I am well aware that there is not a bottomless pit for these things, and you have to draw the line somewhere.For example, at last night's meeting (only the first of the municipal year) there were applications for nearly £30,000, and yet our budget stood at only £10,271.66. Having to give people less money than you think they deserve is bad enough, but made worse by the fact that we know our committee is underfunded by the Lib Dem's in Abingdon. The allocation of funding is based on populations and takes no account of the difficulties encountered by rural communities. In Abingdon (with the largest population in the Vale) they often end the year with money left over which they can carry forward, whereas in the West we often run out of money at our first meeting. This is not because we are careless with our money, we just don't have enough to start off with. Even when we are giving people only one-eighth of what they ask for (as we had to for St John's Community Hall and Chapel in Fernham) there just isn't enough to go round.In the past I have proposed to changes and will continue to push for them. Firstly a fairer system brings all of the grants together for one committee to decide so that there is no geographical disadvantage. Secondly there should be more money in the pot in the first place. There are many ways in which money could be redirected to allow local communities to help themselves just by giving small grants to get them going.