META  — At last Wednesday’s meeting, Kelly Sink of Meramec Regional Planning Commission (MRPC) told Meta aldermen she accepts fault for the issues with the city’s Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) Grant application denial.

“When I got the letter [from the City], it did open my eyes,” said Sink, who has worked for MRPC and prepared grants for over 20 years, adding she may have been on autopilot. “I think I just get into that mode of like, ‘we do this, this, and this, we put those together.’ We submit grants left and right, but I forget that a lot of times with our communities, it might be the very first grant you all have ever put together. Or we might have turnover, new administrators, or new board members.”

Sink added she deals with the verbiage, acronyms, and other elements of writing a grant application. “That is on me, it absolutely is, and that really did open my eyes,” she said. “I’m used to this; I’ve been in this world for quite a long time, but I need to be more cognizant of that.”

Sink said she would ensure she and her colleagues know about potential changes at Meta as MRPC moves forward to work on other grants.

“From now on, when we are working on grants, and myself in particular, I’ll make sure my staff as well, are very cognizant of that,” said Sink. “So, if we shoot out an email, we’ll follow up with a phone call to make sure that you know what we are asking.”

Sink added that if city officials need help understanding, she is happy to talk them through the process. “If we need to come over and do this more often — I mean, get me out of the office as much as you can. Get me over here; I do not mind.”

Sink’s comfort zone includes “spitting out those grants all day long,” but said she needs to get out of that mindset.

“I need to make myself available to you,” she continued. “So I appreciate that letter. I took it to heart.”

On the LWCF grant application, Sink suggested she go over the process with aldermen to help them understand what State Parks is seeking. “You’re 0-2 on the tries with that. When applications are submitted, they go through a technical review. Any that pass a technical review with the State Parks staff, all of those get sent as a bundle to their advisory committee.”

She said the advisory committee includes people who work in parks and recreation, including bicycling and pedestrian activities.

Committee members are responsible for selecting eligible projects they’ll recommend for funding to the National Park Service.

“They are guided by the statewide comprehensive outdoor recreation plan SCorp,” said Sink. “I’m sure in the SCorp, they have certain goals they have to meet — so many different types of recreation per number of population in the state of Missouri. State Parks gives them all these eligible grants, and they’ve only got so much money. They start going through those and select the projects they want to put forth. It’s not a very good percentage rate. I think on your first try in that first year, (State Parks) funded less than 50 percent of the requests that were submitted. In the second year that you will turn it in, they funded about 20 percent of the ones that were turned in. It’s not a great percentage that they’re able to fund, but I want to let you guys know that the feedback you get, which can be from the committee members or maybe State Parks staff or what have you.”

Sink explained the list of items needing clarification on the application is not State Parks’s way of telling Meta that’s why the project didn’t get funded. “Your project met the eligibility requirements both times it got in front of the committee,” said Sink. “They just didn’t select this as one of the ones to move forward. That being said, let’s hope this never happens — but you could turn the same project in 10 years in a row, be turned down, and get one of these letters.”

She noted the city and MRPC would receive different feedback every time, with suggestions such as changing or addressing specific issues. Because different reviewers consider grant applications every year, and have various backgrounds and expertise, the committee’s feedback will differ each year.

“We take that feedback, get back with State Parks to do a re-submittal, and say, ‘How do we address the concerns of the committee members?’ But even if it perfectly addressed all of their comments, and we resubmitted it the next year is going to pass a technical review, but it still might not be selected by the committee,” Sink explained. “That’s where it gets a little bit out of our control. We can have the best application put forward, and it’s in there with 40 others, and they only have enough money to fund a few projects. That part is out of our control.

“Although we want to make sure that we meet any concerns or address any concerns they might have, if they do request any changes or something like that, we want to make sure that we’ve done that, to say, ‘Hey, you know, we did this; you asked us to do this, and we did this.’ So that is the best that we can do, but we always want to take any of their feedback to heart, make sure that we address it,” Sink said.

After making an effort to address concerns, the grant application is resubmitted. In the second year Meta turned that in, a city of Rolla project was selected. “Their letter has probably three times more notes than yours did,” said Sink. “We spent the next two weeks making changes and additions and changing the budget; we had to do a ton of stuff to run this application. Their project was selected, but they still had all of the same things, the feedback. We had to address all of those and turn it back in, so even though they have more things, they had to change in their application, and their project was selected.”

She added that the committee selects projects that members feel best meet the goals and objectives of the SCorp for that year. “The money only goes so far,” Sink continued. “I just throw that out as a comparative. I don’t want you to think you did not get funded because they listed out those five things. A project that had 15 things listed did get selected in that same year, so we still have to go back through and make changes. When the grant round opens back up, we’ll get back with Patty Green at State Parks. We have a great relationship with Patty because we’ve worked with her for years. She knows our area, and we’ll get back with her and say, ‘Okay, this is the feedback that the committee provided last year; we’re, addressing it this way and that way.’ We get her buy-in on all that and turn it in for this year. And now, hopefully, we can get past that.”

Sink told the board that MRPC will have more conversations with the city during the process — phone calls, emails, and sitting down and going through concerns with city officials. “We will make sure that we do that so that everybody has a good comfort level (that) we’re putting in the best product we possibly can,” she added, “and that you don’t feel like your information just went off in the cloud or something and disappeared from them.”

MRPC will also address concerns when the agency does the re-submittal. “We will do a better job of that,” said Sink. “I guarantee you that; I cannot guarantee you that you’ll get the funding, but I guarantee you that we will do a better job of helping you.”

“Do they tend to pick bigger cities over smaller cities?” Alderman Steve Sherrell asked.

“I wouldn’t know,” Sink replied. “I don’t want to say that. They try to get the biggest bang for the buck on the population that benefits from the various projects, so sometimes that lends itself to the higher-population areas. She compared a walking trail in Meta, with a population of 150, with a similar walking trail in Rolla, which has a population of 20,000. “You can say, well, more people can benefit from a walking trail, but that’s not the bottom line on how they select these projects,” said Sink. “They also want to geographically distribute funds. They’re not just going to fund all of one type of project in any given year, so they might get a bunch of tennis court projects in one year. But that doesn’t mean they’re just going to fund all tennis court projects; they’re going to look for diversifying that. They’re going to make sure there are swimming pools, walking trails, playgrounds, and so on. They’re not going to focus on one part of recreation.”

She noted that State Parks awards grants closer to their maximum than to the minimum. “That tells you they probably lean a little bit more towards the larger projects,” said Sink. “If you look on their website at previously funded projects, you might see a whole bunch in the $250,000 range, but then you’ll see one for less than $50,000. You’ll see a $40,000 project, so it’s not to say that they don’t fund smaller projects. I believe that they do.”

However, she believes that when State Parks is trying to get the biggest bang for the buck and meet the goals of the statewide plan, committee members will see where it’s working and get the highest population the benefit of certain projects.

Alderman Ivie Helton said she’s pleased Sink came to the meeting to address the board’s concerns.

“When I looked at this, and I saw all of these things, I felt like these are things that we did wrong,” said Helton. “And, these are things that they’re pointing out why they didn’t give it to us. So, to know that we’re always going to get feedback like that, and everybody does — and those are just suggestions or whatever — helps me look at this differently.”

Sink again took accountability. “That’s a fault on my part,” she offered. “I could have had that conversation with you two years ago. I didn’t even think about it because we’re like, oh, it’s the letter we get every year for, you know, so it’s like we’re just going through the motions. I forget that this is your first time around, seeing that. I really did drop the ball on that. I will do better for you guys in the future.”

“Sometimes, I look at it from the standpoint that we operate at a disadvantage against the bigger cities because we’re so small,” said Alderman Otto Wankum, adding that Meta would use much less than a similar project in a bigger city. “On the same token, it’s probably more important for the people here to have something like that because they got nowhere else to go. We’re not close to Jefferson City or Linn.”

City Clerk Deidra Buechter asked if the city could add the nature of the small town to the re-submittal.

Sink jotted down a note to ensure the grant application narrative alludes to the fact that the benefit would be for people within proximity of Meta.

However, Helton believes people might travel from other nearby places because they don’t have anything like the proposed trail.

“I know a lot of people that work at Diamond (Pet Foods) would go and use it,” Helton added. “They don’t live here, so we could count those people as part of the population.”

Wankum said many people walk up and down the street to get exercise and would benefit from a walking trail.

“Can individuals write letters to submit?” Buechter asked.

“Yes, but it would probably give a little more of a boost if it was from an organization of individuals,” Sink replied.

For example, instead of an individual saying they wanted to use the walking trail, perhaps that person is a church group member, or was employed by Diamond.

“Beef it up a little bit more,” Sink suggested. “This is a letter coming from a group of ladies that would walk the trail, as opposed to just an individual who says that they would walk it.”

Sink said that MRPC will adequately address that aspect of the grant application. She added that having conversations like this give her more insight into the city’s needs. “We can have a checklist all day long, but without the interaction and communication, we don’t catch some of the stuff you know because you live here,” Sink said. “I will make sure, and if we haven’t adequately captured that, I will work with you all to make sure that we do.”

“Thank you so much for the clarification,” said Mayor Emily Sommerer.

In other business, aldermen, at a public hearing prior to the regular meeting, approved a tax rate of .3934 per $100 assessed valuation. That’s down from .3978 last year.

Buechter presented figures showing an assessed valuation of $6,542,692, including real estate ($5,000,720), Personal Property ($1,203,700), Locally Assessed R.R. & Utilities - Real Estate ($2,440), State Assessed R.R. & Utilities - Real Estate ($296,645), and State Assessed R.R. & Utilities - Personal Property ($39,187). There were no new construction or improvements assessed, and personal property was down $50,798 compared to last year.

Remaining business will be presented next week.