Million Dollars nearly lost by City

The good news is that the City has been awarded a $1,102,000 to improve parks (see attachment).  The disconcerting part is how close the City came to nearly losing this money that is so badly needed to improve our parks after the Great Recession.

As the recently retired Director of Lake, Parks & Recreation Department for the City, I filed this grant application on behalf of the City on Jan-22, the application deadline.

This grant solicitation was issued by the State Dept. of Housing.  It was designed to award grant money to local governments for the past good work performed on providing low-income housing.  It was a non-competitive grant, so if the City is qualified, then the City would receive the grant money. And the City was qualified, as it provided 261 units of low-income housing.  The high value of this grant meant it should’ve been a high priority for the City Manager and a “no brainer” to file this grant application well ahead of the deadline.

I had to find out about this grant opportunity by reading a Press Enterprise News article on Wednesday, Jan-15th, about the City of Temecula's Community Development Department applying for substantial grant funding for parks.

By the time I found out about this grant opportunity, the grant application was due in Sacramento in 7-days.  So, I cleared my calendar and worked a fair amount of the weekend.  The final grant application consisted of 349 pages of supporting documents. 

One document I found is a letter from the State Housing Dept. addressed to City Manager Yates and dated Sept-16, 2013.  The entire third paragraph of this letter to the City Manager discusses how the City of Lake Elsinore now meets the requirements for the Housing-Related Parks Grant that rewards local governments funding for park improvements.