The Garden City Telegram
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Grants to help pool, playgrounds
Published 8/22/2008 in News : Area coverage
By EMILY BEHLMANN
ebehlmann@gctelegram.com
Garden City's Big Pool and several area playgrounds soon could be more suited for children 5 and younger, as a result of grant funding they're receiving this month from Smart Start of Southwest Kansas.
The organization, which distributes funding to area agencies serving young children, is providing its $10,000 playground grants this year to Garden City Recreation Commission, Deerfield USD 216 and the cities of Satanta and Tribune.
Donna Gerstner, assistant superintendent at the Garden City Recreation Commission, said she plans to use the grant toward construction of a "spray park" on the east side of the Big Pool.
The fence around the municipal pool would be expanded to accommodate the area, which would involve squirting water coming up from the cement and draining to a central area. Various other features could be included, too, she said.
Gerstner said the spray park is especially geared toward young children who might be afraid to enter a pool.
"There would be all kinds of neat things for kids to do," she said. "They can get used to the water and finally, maybe they'll take the plunge and go into the wading pool area."
However, a master plan for the Big Pool also includes spray park areas for older children. Gerstner said her ideal project would cost a total of about $160,000, though some elements could be removed or delayed. Now, after receiving a $2,500 from the city to help match the Smart Start grant, she's waiting to see how much additional funding might come out of the city's capital improvement project process next year.
She said she hopes the grant helps speed up the process for funding the "different type of playground" she envisions.
A more traditional playground is planned at Deerfield Elementary School, to be used by the school's kindergartners and pre-schoolers, as well as the children in USD 216's staff day care and others in the community.
Principal Amy DeLaRosa said the young children currently use old, wooden equipment that she thinks is unsafe and inappropriate for the age group. The slide is cracked and children get splinters from the wood, she said.
Superintendent Jon Ansley said the district plans to use grant funds to order new equipment for climbing, sliding and other activities. Part of their goal is to encourage exercise among overweight youth, DeLaRosa said.
"We want to give them more opportunities to climb and jump and play and run around," she said.
Young children in Tribune will have a chance to partake in similar activities when new playground equipment arrives there, according to Carol Miles of the Greeley County Community Development Office.
New equipment will replace the outdated items at Holland Park, which Miles said is centrally located and accessible to anyone in town. The items are specialized for children 5 and younger and include small slides, a climbing area, tubes to crawl through and a wall displaying the alphabet.
"We definitely needed to update," she said. "We really didn't have a place in the community where that age group had equipment."
The so-called "Methodist Park," across from the United Methodist Church in Satanta, will receive a similar makeover with new equipment geared toward young children, said Stacey King, who wrote the grant along with fellow Satanta resident Stephanie Frank.
King said the park is centrally located and used by the school district, after-school programs and the church, as well as residents.
To help support Satanta's playground project, King and others also collected about $6,000 in donations from businesses and individuals, she said.
Smart Start is funded primarily by Kansas Children's Trust Fund money from a 1999 Master Tobacco Settlement, although it also receives support from the United Way of Finney County and some other sources.
Rebecca Clancy, director of Smart Start of Southwest Kansas, said that when the playground grant program began in 2005, the grants were much smaller. And given the expense of playground equipment, the funding didn't take recipients very far. Now, Smart Start receives more funding from the Kansas Children's Cabinet, the group responsible for distributing the tobacco settlement money.
"This makes it easier for someone to be able to do something with the money," Clancy said.
Grant recipients are selected by an independent review team, and the group looks for plans that would create more outdoor play opportunities that many young children can access, she said.
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