The Chadron City Council has approved more than $44,000 in grants from the LB-840 Community Improvement Fund to fully or partially pay for four projects.
10% of the revenue from the half-cent city’s economic development sales tax is set aside for community betterment projects, reviewed by a city committee and sent to the council for approval.
Few such projects have been approved in recent years, a situation that new City Manager Wayne Anderson blames on requirements adopted by the original review committee that limit grants to paying for work already done and call for a match from the group requesting the money.
Anderson has worked with the current LB-840 panel to ease those rules and drop the requirements for a match and for a project to be funded up-front by the organization doing it.
The largest grant approved this week is a little over $14,000 to the Chadron Parks Foundation for a drinking fountain at the Roger Eaton soccer field, borders around playground equipment, wood chips for the parks grounds, and 8 “doggie deposit” bag disposal stations in several city parks.
$12,246 goes to the Chadron Arts Center for an access ramp to the building. The Arts Center group has already raised another $5,000 for the project.
The Chadron Parks Department gets $10,658 for a new backstop at the Maurice Horse Legion Field, a project being done on behalf of the Chadron Youth Baseball organization. The pipes of the existing backstop are rusting out, while the new one will be built in sections that can be repaired or replaced separately.
The final grant is $7,500 to the Cemetery Kiosk Committee for a gazebo-like shelter to protect the year-old electronic gravesite information kiosk at the Greenwood Cemetery from the weather. An earlier grant from the improvement fund covered about half the cost of the kiosk itself.
Anderson is excited about the projects and hopes to see many others move forward with the loosened guidelines on matching funds and reimbursements.
Anderson says the improvement fund still has about $113,000 available for grants, with more coming in each year. The half-cent LB-840 sales tax expires in April 2014, but the city is expected to ask voters next year to renew the tax.