The grants range from $15,000 for a kitchen at Araluen's Federation Community Hall, to $50,000 to repair the roof and water damage to the Captains Flat Community Hall and a lighting project in Wilkins Park.

Some of the other projects to receive funds are the Braidwood swimming pool, Burra tennis courts, Carwoola community hall, Majors Creek tennis courts and an upgrade to the Wamboin power supply.

Bywong Community Association will receive $32,000 to build two composting toilets at the community hall on Les Reardon Reserve and $10,000 for a new children's bus shelter.

Reserve coordinator Hans Bachor said the funds were a very good present for the new year.

``We basically have very little infrastructure but we have a lot of people,'' he said.

``The community hall will become much more of a focus point and more useful for the community if it has public facilities.''

Palerang Council mayor Ian Marjason said the sub committee responsible for the distribution of funding had a difficult time allocating the grants, as the proposals submitted to council totalled almost $1 million.

``These were all worthy projects, so as well as taking into account the federal government's guidelines for the grants we had to establish our own supplementary set of criteria to fine tune the allocations,'' he said.

``These included demonstrated needs within each community, whether projects would assist local business and employment and if they would provide benefits for Palerang residents beyond the locality proposing the project.''