A group that was formed to distribute cigarette tax revenues to help families with young children awarded $587,000 in emergency response grants when it met in Lake Havasu City Thursday.

The La Paz/Mohave Regional Partnership Council of First Things First was authorized by the agency's state board to distribute discretionary funds in three areas: childcare scholarships for low-income families, food boxes and home visitation services.

The grants are the first distribution from the revenue stream created by an 80-cent-a-pack cigarette tax approved by voters in November 2006.

"This is a day I've been waiting for for a long time," said council Chairman William Allsbrooks. "Today, we're actually going to start spending money to do good things for kids."

The council granted a total of $103,000 to five western Arizona agencies to provide monthly food boxes targeted at families with children from ages birth through 5.

The remaining funds will go to hire staff and pay direct costs at organizations that perform home visits to support expectant mothers and families with small children that are at risk.

Interagency Council was granted $212,000 to help fund its Healthy Families Arizona program. Executive Director Rich Miers said last month the agency had lost 75 percent of its funding for Healthy Families, forcing it to lay off five staff members and cut about 70 families from the program's rolls.

"This is going to allow us to bring at least two employees back and reinstate many of our services," Miers said Thursday.

Interagency also received a $24,000 grant to provide food assistance in the form of monthly food boxes that will also contain supplies appropriate to children from age birth to 5.

"That's a really neat way to enhance our food bank program, and we're very excited to get started," Miers said.

Miers said the agency would use its databases to identify eligible families already on its rolls.

The council chose not to fund either of two grant applications it received for childcare scholarships. Local council member Debra Weger said the council's decision was based on the fact that the First Things First board had already allocated more than $675,000 of its own discretionary funds to provide scholarships for 330 families in the region for at least four months.

Regional coordinator Merritt Beckett said that Northern Arizona United Way, which has been contracted by the board to review scholarship grant applications for the La Paz/Mohave region, has already awarded funding to nine childcare providers.

"We're, in my opinion, not going to be lacking eligible families," Beckett said.

You may contact the reporter at dparker@havasunews.com.