Park County commissioners approve grants, FEMA alternate-project request and a series of MOUs; hire county HR candidate

Park County commissioners on April 8 approved a slate of funding applications, agreements and procurement steps intended to support transit safety, youth mental-health programming, road and flood recovery work and county operations.

The commissioners voted to apply for two Park County Community Foundation grants — a Windrider transit camera system for a new passenger van and operational funding for the Communities That Care program — and approved a separate emergency management performance grant submission covering 50% of the county’s emergency management budget. They also authorized submitting an alternate project request to FEMA for the Trail Creek 2023 flood project, signed memoranda of understanding allowing the City of Livingston to use county property for radio hosting and to store roadway milling material, approved covering a small grant shortfall for a sandbagging machine from Public Works funds, and accepted the HR hiring committee’s recommendation to appoint Marissa Reddington to a county position.

Why it matters: the actions free small local grants and federal dollars to be used for equipment, services and staff costs without increasing ongoing county obligations in some cases; the FEMA alternate-project path lets the county use a modest federal award more flexibly rather than undertake a federally prescribed repair that likely would not be fully funded.

Grant applications and community programs

County staff presented two Park County Community Foundation grant applications. Kristen (county staff, grants) said Windrider is requesting $4,000 for a camera system on a new passenger van, and Communities That Care requested $20,000 toward an $80,000 operating budget; she said there is no county match for either request. "Just to follow the math and as indicated in the executive summary, there is still no county match, when Windrider is requesting 4,000, and the remaining balance for that system comes from grant funds that we get from Giveahoot donation. And then for CTC, that request is 20,000. Their budget is 80,000. The rest of that is grant funded through 2 other grants," Kristen said.

Commissioners voiced support for the two…