Edmonton's new winter festival will get an additional $300,000 from the city, municipal councillors decided Thursday, which means the event now has the money to go ahead in January.

The money is in addition to the $450,000 council allocated to the Winter Light Festival in September.

The festival, which kicks off in January and continues into March, will incorporate a number of existing events like Ice on Whyte and Silver Skates, and will introduce some new ones.

The money comes as councillors try to make cuts to the proposed 2009 budget to avoid homeowners getting stuck with the double-digit tax increase that was originally projected in October.

Festival chairperson John Mahon said he appreciates people's concern for how their tax dollars will be spent.

"I'm not casual about $750,000, but people have to remember the big New Year's Eve celebrations that everyone liked so much last year was about 250,000" dollars, he said.

"There's a lot of people involved in this and no one makes much money, but you've got to pay people and they cost something."

Arts and culture take up less than 0.5 per cent of the city budget, Mahon said, though funding requests often get more media attention than that amount would suggest.

"If they cut it all, I don't think that would make much of an impact on your taxes," he said.

"It'd be an awful long year without all these events going on."

Mahon said the original proposal contained a request for money for the 2010 version of the festival.

But councillors won't commit any money to that until they can evaluate the response to the 2009 festival.