{"id":72616,"date":"2017-06-16T17:33:46","date_gmt":"2017-06-16T23:33:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/cortez-teams-up-with-inspire-coalition-to-secure-goco-grant\/"},"modified":"2017-06-16T23:33:46","modified_gmt":"2017-06-16T23:33:46","slug":"cortez-teams-up-with-inspire-coalition-to-secure-goco-grant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/cortez-teams-up-with-inspire-coalition-to-secure-goco-grant\/","title":{"rendered":"Cortez teams up with Inspire Coalition to secure GOCO grant"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Cortez
Cortez City Park, where Parks and Recreation Director Dean Palmquist hopes to use part of a GOCO grant to upgrade playground equipment.<\/span>City of Cortez<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

The Cortez Parks and Recreation Department, along with more than a dozen other organizations that make up the Montezuma Inspire Coalition, is about to submit its first joint application for state funding.<\/p>\n

The Coalition, one of several of its kind in the state, is made up of 18 nonprofits and local government agencies related to outdoor recreation. It was awarded a $75,000 planning grant in July of 2016 to put together a joint application for a Great Outdoors Colorado grant that would fund a variety of large projects the member groups want to implement. At the Parks, Recreation and Forestry Advisory Board meeting on Friday, Director Dean Palmquist presented a list of Inspire member organizations that have pledged matching funds for the grant, which will be submitted along with the draft application on June 26.<\/p>\n

In addition to Parks and Recreation, the organizations in the Inspire Coalition include San Juan Mountains Association, the Pi\u00f1on Project, the Cortez Cultural Center, High Desert DEVO, the Southwest Conservation Corps, the Dolores Library and many others. Over the last several months, each of them has put together a proposal for a different project for which they\u2019ll need state money. The matching funds they\u2019ve proposed so far add up to almost $3 million total. The Montezuma Land Conservancy, the Coalition\u2019s fiscal agent, will put all the proposals together into one draft application. After getting feedback from Great Outdoors Colorado, they\u2019ll have about a month to make changes to the application before the final deadline at the end of July.<\/p>\n

If the grant is awarded, Cortez Parks and Recreation will use its portion of the money to replace the playground equipment at City Park and to fund field trips for families in the community. The department has pledged a maximum of $18,680 in matching funds for the field trips and $321,012 for the playground. Most of the other organizations plan to use the grant for youth programs like School to Farm, or maintenance for places like Hawkins Preserve.<\/p>\n

This is the city\u2019s first year working with Inspire on a grant application, and members of the advisory board said it\u2019s been an eye-opening experience.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t know there were so many groups involved,\u201d Bob Archibeque said. \u201cBeing an educator, I think it\u2019s very important that we get kids motivated to be outside\u2026I think it\u2019s just a great program.\u201d<\/p>\n

Palmquist said there\u2019s no guarantee that all the projects will get funded. Even though all the proposals will be submitted at once, GOCO could choose to fund just a few of them. It\u2019s also not certain how much money would be available for the grant, so each organization will submit two proposed grant amounts: one that would match 100 percent of their project budget and one that would just cover 50 percent. It\u2019ll be up to GOCO to choose which amount to give, if any.<\/p>\n

Still, Palmquist said he\u2019s optimistic, especially since he believes the Montezuma coalition is the only one in the state with a land conservancy operating on their behalf.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we\u2019ve got a good shot at getting funded,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He and the rest of the Coalition will find out this fall. If the grant is approved, most of the organizations\u2019 projects will be implemented next year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Recreation, nonprofits submit joint proposal<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27433,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[21,318,13,1982],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-72616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-cortez","tag-cortez-municipal-government","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-parks"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72616"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72616\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27433"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72616"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=72616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}