High Five funding to help pool, skate rink

BONNERS FERRY — The City of Bonners Ferry is currently in the second year in the utilization the $250,000 High Five! Community Transformation Grant that was awarded in October 2016. The grant money comes from the Blue Cross Foundation of Idaho, which works with communities around the state in order to combat childhood obesity.

Bonners Ferry City Administer Lisa Ailport has been working with a steering committee made up with representatives from the City of Bonners Ferry, Boundary County Parks and Recreation, University of Idaho Extension Office, Boundary County School District, Boundary County Library, Boundary Community Hospital, and a citizen at large/BOCO.

“Because the steering committee represents such a deep facet of the leadership within the community as a whole, we are bringing buy-in not just from the city, but from the community as a whole.” said Ailport.

Together they have listened to the community and implemented several plans, utilizing the funds in creative ways, not only in the projects they have undertaken, but also in using the grant to leverage aid from other organizations.

“My commitment was to try and turn $250,000 into a million,” explained Ailport.

The idea behind leveraging is to utilize the money from the High Five grant and put it into an idea or project, and then asking for other funding to reach the financial goal of that project. Many organizations are willing to offer money in the form of a grant if they see that the project is already partially funded.

“If you have some skin in the game, you have some money you want to commit to it, we think that we can now enhance that project even greater,” said Ailport. “We leverage the money, we leverage the community.”

For one of the projects, they started with $10,000 of the High Five grant money and were able to turn that into $26,000 through leveraging. This stretches the $250,000 received in 2016, and although Ailport has not reached her goal of turning it into a million dollars yet, she continues to aim for it.

Currently, they are approximately two thirds of their way through the High Five grant. One of the largest projects that has been set into place was the City Pool.

“As far as I can tell, the pool was built in the mid 1930s, so the concrete — as you can imagine — was questionable as far as its lifespan being exhausted,” explained Ailport.

In the fight against childhood obesity, as well as the goal of adolescents receiving 60 minutes of physical activity each day, swimming is great way to exercise in the heat of summer while remaining cool.

According to Ailport, it cost nearly $300,000 to rehabilitate the aging pool, with $60,000 of that coming out of the High Five grant.

Bonners Ferry High School also received $23,239 toward new cardio equipment for the students.

“They had a number of aged cardio machines. Rotary sponsored $1,000 of this,” said Ailport. “That was pretty exciting to see local community effort being brought in and fund something.”

A cross country trail that is currently being established in the property behind the high school also received $10,000 in High Five money.

“The school district owns quite a bit of property behind the high school, so they are looking at doing a disc golf course back there that will be open to the community, and a community trail that they will use for their cross country,” explained Ailport. “That is pretty exciting.”

Other projects funded with the High Five grant include bringing in Mark Fenton, a public health, planning, and transportation consultant, a plan for the city to make Bonners Ferry more accessible for bicyclists and pedestrians, BOCO backpacks, and more.

Although the City of Bonners Ferry was the recipient of the grant, when they applied for it, they defined the community as being not just within the city limits.

“We said that the community as a whole is everywhere where we congregate as people, so we looked at the county, we looked at our respective cities— Bonners Ferry and Moyie Springs,” explained Ailport.

They recognized a need for a playground or play equipment in Moyie Springs, near residential areas where there are children who are looking for activities to do, and that project is currently being researched.

“Dennis (Weed) has been critically involved with championing that project and delivering that message. We feel like it is moving in a good direction,” said Ailport. “I am pretty hopeful that we will see the project funded out there.”

An exciting project that is still in the planning stages is for an ice skating rink at the Boundary County Fairgrounds. While they have had a temporary rink in the past, they are now planning for a synthetic rink that is not dependent on the weather.

“We did a community wide survey early on, to kind of gauge where the community was in wanting to look at projects,” said Ailport. “One that came up was the need for winter time sports activities.”

“I think that we have to be thinking about seasonal activities and not just focusing on one season or another,” Ailport explained. “That is why the skate rink is such a neat opportunity. We are looking at all facets of seasonal activity levels.”

Another plan on the drawing board is one that Ailport is very excited about. It would be an activity that could bridge the gaps between summer and winter.

“When we first got this grant, we immediately thought of putting a splash pad in at the pool, but when the cost of the pool came back at such an expensive cost, we had to forgo the idea,” said Ailport. “But because we were so diligent about leveraging those dollars, we now are looking at an opportunity to reconsider that, which is super exciting.”

“Putting that extra facility in would allow different people who either don’t swim, or have young children who don’t know how to swim, the opportunity to be active with water,” said Ailport.

Thanks to the creative use of leveraging, the High Five money has funded many significant projects already, and there is still around $87,000 left to use.

“If we don’t use it, we lose it,” explained Ailport. “So I am committed to spending as much of that money and leveraging as much as we can. I don’t want us to miss out.”

Ailport’s excitement and commitment to utilizing the High Five grant money is evident. She hopes to turn the three year project into a 20-year, or longer, endeavor. She stresses that although each of these projects is a great win for the community, there is more needed in the battle against childhood obesity.

“They don’t necessarily tip the needle one way or the other because, if our community doesn’t support all aspects of health, and really drive what is making the community healthy in all of its ways, like mental health and physical health, eating accessible foods, then we are really not moving that needle,” explained Ailport.

But Ailport and her team are up for the challenge, and they push on, one project at a time.