The McMinnville Parks and Recreation Department is in the process of applying for a Healthy Built Environments grant through the Tennessee Department of Health.
According to McMinnville recreation program coordinator Kyle Clyde, the city’s application will be submitted next week, in advance of the Jan. 29 deadline.
Clyde says that he, director Scott McCord, and McMinnville community planner Katie Kemezis have been working collaboratively over the last several months to put the application together. The grant, if awarded, would provide McMinnville Parks and Recreation with $48,000 of funding. The funding would be used to construct a master plan for the parks department.
“What we’re trying to do is get a master plan for McMinnville Parks and Rec,” Clyde says.
A master plan, generally speaking, would provide the parks department and the city with an assessment of the department’s current state, would identify needs in terms of programming, resources, facilities, and land, and would map out what the parks department needs to do in order to accomplish its long-term goals.
As Clyde puts it, a master plan would answer the question, “What kind of programming and what kind of facilities does the city need?”
Having a master plan would have the added benefit of allowing Parks and Recreation and the city to apply for other grants, many of which require the applying entity to have a master plan.
Clyde says the Healthy Built Environments grant, if awarded, would be outright funding. “The grant does not require any matching funds,” Clyde says.
On March 5, the city will find out if McMinnville has been awarded the grant.
The Tennessee Healthy Built Environments grant program was begun in 2018 and has awarded $1.8 million in funding. Two-thirds of the projects funded have been located in “economically distressed or at-risk counties,” according to the Tennessee Department of Health. Projects have included “playgrounds, walking tracks, outdoor fitness stations, greenways, trails, and other publicly accessible spaces that promote physical activity and social interaction.”