COALPORT – Board member Hildred Rowles, who also serves as the hotel tax committee chairman, called attention to recurring difficulties with grant recipients at Wednesday’s regular meeting of the Clearfield County Recreation and Tourism Authority.
Rowles reported that some grant recipients have not responded to their award letters in a timely fashion.
He said the hotel tax committee recommended that they implement a timeline. He said that they should require recipients to sign and return the necessary paperwork within 30 days.
“And, if you don’t, your grant will be forfeited,” he explained. He added that in the past, they have not received responses from recipients but were contacted months later about the grant’s availability.
Board chairman Wilson Fisher said, “It sounds reasonable to me.”
Director Sandy Fink-Barrett said the board has been very lax with the grant paperwork process. She said that they must make the timeline very clear and send it with the award letter.
“If they’re truly ready to move on with a project, they will have it returned within four or five days,” she said. She said that they need a board policy regarding the grant response deadline in place.
Board member Rita Hahn suggested that they should contact grant recipients who have not responded a second time in a final notice.
She said that in the notice, they should request an immediate response from the grant recipient. She said they should notify them that failure to do so will result in an automatic forfeiture of the grant.
“We need to cover ourselves procedurally. We don’t want to be the bad guys,” Hahn said.
Rowles said that he would draft a policy accordingly. He said that they needed to do so, as they operate under a six-month grant cycle.
“If we don’t have a response, it can be awarded to someone else,” he said.
