Park grant application approved by commissioners

Park grant application approved by commissioners News Staff Wed, 07/10/2024 - 9:21 am Breckenridge city commissioners have approved a TPWD grant application geared towards adding a splash pad to the Breckenridge city pool. File photo By Mike Williams news@breckenridgeamerican.com The city of Breckenridge took its next steps toward installing a splash pad at the Breckenridge City Pool. City commissioners approved two measures aimed at bringing the improvement to the pool. During its Tuesday, July 2 meeting, the Breckenridge City Commission approved an ordinance that prohibited drilling and mining inside public parks in the city. The ordinance is not a requirement of the grant, but City Manager Cynthia Northrop said it will help strengthen an application for the a Texas Parks and Wildlife 2025 Local Park Grant. The city had previously banned drilling and mining in city parks and repealed this along with several other ordinances in 2016. “Ordinance 2016-17 repealed several ordinances and this was the quote, ‘having determined that certain provisions regarding alcoholic beverages, drilling operations, finance and taxation, noise control, occupational licenses and regulations, and certain offenses are outdated and should be modernized and revised to comply with state law,’” Northrop said. “I think this is something that maybe fell through the cracks and we didn’t (reinstate) the prohibition to drill in our city parks. This closes that gap.” After the ordinance was approved, city commissioners authorized the submission of the grant application for the TPWD Local Park Grant. As a result of the strategic plan adopted in 2023, the city began to pursue the 50% matching grant of up to $750,000. The splash pad project includes the new splash pad, site improvements, electrical enclosure building, lighting, sod and irrigation and potentially retrofitting the baby pool to bring into ADA compliance.  Jacobs and Martin Engineering was approved last month for the engineering of the projects and Public Management Inc. was approved to serve as grant administrators. Northrop said the city has been working with PMI Project Manager Morgan Verette on the grant and application process. The current estimate for the project is $800,000. The city’s matching portion of this cost would be $431,122. Of that amount, there is $18,094 of over-match by the city. Verette said this is because the grant only allows for a maximum of 12% for professional services to be part of the grant matching. “We are going to be going to the community for letters of support for the grant application,” Northrop said. “We can go out and actively seek donations that can help us out. Just as a reminder, we do have the interest from the COOs (which) will probably be right around $400,000 depending on what happens with interest rates. I think we’ll be able to cover the city’s match with COO funding primarily. We’re also going to try to go out for donations.” The application deadline for the grant is Thursday, Aug. 1. According to TPWD, the application review process takes about five months. The recreation grants staff and an agency resource staff review applications. When all of the information necessary to complete the application is received, the project is evaluated, put in priority order by score, and recommendations are presented to the TPWD Commission, who will make the final decision. The grant application will be graded in 13 categories. These categories are goals and objectives, project timeline and cost, site design, organizational capacity, past performance, community needs, geographic distribution, under-served populations, accessibility, conservation, sustainable park design, coordination with subject matter experts and outside partnerships. Verette said the city would ideally find out if it is awarded the grant in late fall or early winter 2024 and the contract would begin early next year.  News