The Snoqualmie City Council has decided to relinquish a King County community development block grant (CDBG) of $28,933 that was intended to be used for improvements to Koinonia Park, a small park on S.E. Gravenstein Court. The city intends to reapply for a grant in the future to get the improvements done.

Originally the city applied for $110,000 to redo the park, but competition for the grant was steep and Snoqualmie did not receive its requested amount, said Nicole Sanders, associate planner.

The grant amount of $28,933 was not enough to implement the improvements, so the city looked for other grant sources but staff was unable to secure additional funding. The CDBG funds were also contingent on substantial progress by March 31, 2016.

“The best thing to do is relinquish the funds and then basically reapply. They thought competition wouldn’t be as strong this year,” Sanders said.

Planning staff is now developing another application and will submit a letter of intent to a Youth Sports Facilities Grant program, requesting $75,000 to help bolster the funds if the block grant falls short again.

The improvements to the park are estimated to cost more than $100,000, but the type of work that will be done will rely on the amount of funds the city has access to.

“We could do it for 110 or 120 (thousand dollars), if we could get more like 200 plus we could go for a really nice park,” she said. “It’s cute but not very versatile for multiple ages. There is a small .15 acre field next to it but it is sloped and has poor drainage that flows into the play structure. We would like to level out the field, fix drainage, double to triple the square footage of the play area and put in one that’s more appropriate for a wide range of ages.”

The area around Koinonia Park is a Habitat for Humanity neighborhood, which may improve the city’s chances for the grant award, because the grants are targeted to lower-income communities.

Kathy Tremper, community development coordinator for King County, oversees the allocation of block grant funds and explained why the city received a small amount of their initial request and encouraged Snoqualmie to resubmit their application again.

“Our funds are for more low income housing communities, however competition was really high that year. Ultimately they were rated lower than some of the other projects that had high needs.” Tremper said. “We highly encouraged them to (reapply) because it’s a really good project.”

According to Tremper, Snoqualmie is difficult to fund because of the income is higher than in most areas and Census data is considered when deciding how to allocate the funds.