Making Parks Grants “Sexy”

Kitsap County owns nearly 6,000 acres of park land, much of it undeveloped. And citizens of a growing Kitsap are clamoring for more recreational opportunities, even as economic uncertainty has slapped the county’s parks and recreation budget with the dubious “discretionary funding” label.
Parks and recreation staff have had to find creative ways to advance capital projects on the public’s (and county’s) wish list. By the end of the summer they will have applied for more than $3.5 million in grant funding from the state’s Recreation and Conservation Office. By September, they will know where they stand in relation to the hundreds of other jurisdictions competing for state recreation dollars. By March, 2009 — if all goes well — at least some of those dollars will start flowing in.
Applying for grants is nothing new, but this time around, parks and rec staff have done everything they can to ensure that the applications they submit have the fiscal equivalent of sex appeal.
“The term this time was, ‘How sexy will this grant be?” said parks and rec director Chip Faver.
The Kitsap County Board of Commissioners will vote tonight on resolutions in support of the department’s grant strategy.
Here’s a list of the grants (note: The West Peninsula Trails plan involves two grants, one for off-road vehicles, the other for equestrian and hiking trails. This document, sent by the parks department, contains a typo indicating both applications are for off-road vehicles. Presumably the grant applications themselves will be edited for such errors.)
ParkGrants.pdf
ParkGrants.pdf