By City of Coolidge
By Jacob Dorsey | Pinal Central
Ongoing development of Regional Park is a big project for the city, with multiple departments working in tandem to get past the long design phase.
One of the key aspects of any project, but especially one of this size and cost, is searching for, applying for and accepting as many grants as possible to offset the cost to the city. One of the final steps the city is taking before applying for earthwork approval comes down to a grant.
While providing an update on the new park to the City Council, Parks and Recreation Director Ricky LaPaglia confirmed that the Coolidge grants coordinator had found an Arizona State Parks grant of more than $1.5 million, but it requires a Categorical Exclusion under the National Environmental Policy Act, or CATEX, to be completed first.
The park, due to get a new name, is a site with a history of agricultural pesticide mixing, which triggers environmental analysis.
CATEX is the lowest level of analysis from the National Environmental Policy Act and could exclude the park from further analysis if it found not to have major environmental issues. This process has been lengthy, but LaPaglia expects it to be finished either before the second City Council meeting in July or the first meeting in August.
