Align Arapahoe Performance Dashboard

Parks and trails are an important factor in ensuring a vibrant and healthy community. The ability to access parks and trails is essential to increasing quality of life in Arapahoe County.

Medium - Arapahoe County receives a certain amount of funding each year to allocate to jurisdictions within the County for parks and trails. While the County does not have control over the amount of funding received, we have the ability to communicate with other jurisdictions the importance of applying for grant funding so that all allocated funding can be awarded.

The Board of County Commissioners (BOCC) allocated $5.5 million for the 2023 grant cycle in 2022. We received and evaluated 13 applications totaling $4,408,799 and ultimately staff and OSTAB recommended funding 12 applications totaling $4,183,799.  This included 4 planning grants, 7 standard grants and 1 small grant as defined below:

• $4,000,000 for Standard Grants: $150,001 to $600,000, 25% minimum cash match
• Up to $750,000 for Small Grants: $1,000 to $150,000, 10% minimum cash match
• Up to $750,000 for Planning Grants: $1,000 to $150,000, 10% minimum cash match

For the 2023 grant cycle, we increased maximum award amounts to $600,000 (standard grants) and $150,000 (small and planning grants) in response to grantee feedback about rising costs, and we increased the total grant cycle allocation for the year to $5.5 million.

Although total requests were down in the 2023 grant cycle, we do not believe that this indicates a decrease in future demand for grant funding.