Graham city manager updates council on TPWD grant

The Graham City Council was updated on the status of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Grant submitted by the city in December at last Thursday’s council meeting. The city is attempting to obtain TPWD matching grants to allow for more improvements to the local parks.

The city of Graham received $1.3 million from the Brazos River Authority for parks improvement projects in June 2018. The money was received for the Salt Creek Park project to turn the floodplain along Salt Creek into a park for the city with a waiver of liability to the BRA.

The council approved the 2019 Park Improvement Study Executive Summary prepared by the engineering company Jacob Martin, LLC, and authorized the Graham Parks and Recreation board to give the engineering company the authority to apply for grants with TPWD in October. City Manager Brandon Anderson said the city anticipates hearing an update in the coming months regarding the state of their application.

“We anticipate hearing some information back on that in March,” he said. “Also, late yesterday evening and first thing this morning I forwarded it to Lee (Boyd) and the mayor and a couple other members from the parks board, the trails grant application for our review before we submit that.”

The city is attempting to apply for their first application to TPWD, which Anderson said in a previous meeting will cover the first phase of the potential park improvement project. The city council hosted a public hearing at the beginning of December regarding the submission of a grant application to TPWD, and expanded upon the proposed three-phase plan for the project.

Phase one of the project in the 2019 Park Improvement Study Executive Summary will be an estimated cost of $1,112,000, phase two will be estimated cost of $1 million and phase three will be an estimated cost of $411,000. Some of the improvements within all three projects includes a disc golf course, a dog park, new pavilions, an amphitheater, new flag football and soccer fields and more. One addition included in phase one of the project is trails with lighted pathways for Firemen’s Park at an estimated cost of $240,000.

For the full story, see the Wednesday, Jan. 29 edition of The Graham Leader.