Gov. Haslam Awards $547,000 in Parks and Recreation Grants

Last Friday Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam and Environment and Conservation Commissioner Bob Martineau awarded an additional $547,000 in grants for recreational trail projects across Tennessee.

The grants are through the Recreational Trails Program, a federally-funded program established to distribute funding for motorized, non-motorized and diverse recreation trail projects. The funds are available to federal, state and local government agencies, as well as non-profit organizations that have obtained IRS 501(c)(3) status and have a written trail management agreement with the agency that owns the property where the trail project is located.

Recreational Trails Program grants may be used for non-routine maintenance and restoration of existing trails, development and rehabilitation, trailside or trailhead facilities such as restrooms, kiosks and parking lots, construction of new trails and land acquisition for recreational trails or corridors.

Funding for RTP grants is provided by the Federal Highway Administration through the federal Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act. The Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation administers this grant program for the state. The maximum federal share for each project is 80 percent, with RTP grant recipients providing a 20 percent match.

Grant recipients were selected through a scoring process with careful consideration given to the projects that met the selection criteria and expressed the greatest local recreation need.

To learn more about the RTP grant program and other recreation or conservation-based grant programs available in the future, please click here. For more information about the RTP grant program, contact Gerald Parish at (615) 532-0538 or Gerald.Parish@tn.gov.

A complete list of the grants announced last Friday can be found here.


Jeff
HikingintheSmokys.com