The City of Kalona will present their application later this month for projects utilizing Washington County Riverboat Foundation (WCRF) funds in the next fiscal year.
City Administrator Ryan Schlabaugh says they have until January 22nd to submit their plans on how they will use about $140,000 in WCRF municipal funds. He says two park projects top their list, “We are looking to do an all-inclusive playground in our Kalona City Park that would be designed to ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) standards and be inclusive and usable for those that might be in a wheelchair, for example. We would like to build a small playground area that would be inclusive for that. And we have a dog park and frisbee golf (course) out at Southtown that we would like to start.”
By Mike Jorgensen
Budgets for schools are tight and they are always looking for more resources to provide unique and challenging programming for students, facility improvements or professional development opportunities for administration and students. One of those resources is to write grants from federal, state and corporate partners.
I was very active during my career as a superintendent in writing grants. I was successful in obtaining over $3 million in grant dollars for my districts throughout my career.
Washington County Schools are fortunate that we have The Washington County Riverboat Foundation, who has been a great partner in providing grant opportunities to the schools and we are thankful to them. The Highland Community School District continues to seek out and successfully apply for grants beyond what is provided by the Riverboat Foundation. I will highlight three grants the district has received in the last few weeks and what they will do for the students of Highland.
Several local organizations that suffered revenue losses due to the COVID-19 pandemic received relief grants from the Washington County Riverboat Foundation this fall, including Main Street Washington.
The non-profit organization received $13,000, which Main Street Director Sarah Grunewaldt says will help offset losses caused by a lack of event programming, “And this year for businesses have been really tight, we felt really awkward about going out and asking them for money when they didn’t know if they were going to be able to keep their doors open. So we really cinched in our belt and kind of cut our budget as much as we could to kind of keep our costs as low as we could, so we could continue operations without being a burden on our businesses and then also to backfill from those event losses.”
Washington Page
On today’s program we’re talking with Washington Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Michelle Redlinger about a recent Washington County Riverboat Foundation grant they received, holiday events, and looking back at 2020. This is part two of a two-part interview.