Cereal & District Athletic Assoc. receives $50,000 MSP Grant
By Joan Janzen
joanjanzen@yahoo.com
There will be some construction taking place in Cereal, Alberta in the upcoming months, thanks to a Municipal Stimulus Program (MSP) Grant. Cereal & District Athletic Association was recently awarded a $50,000 MSP Grant through Municipal Affairs. The amount of $50,000 of funding was made available to municipalities with smaller populations.
In an effort to minimize administrative and reporting requirements, municipalities were required to apply for the grant by October 1, 2020 with one or two specific projects in mind.
Clint Olsen, vice-president of the Cereal & District Athletic Association, explained that by the time they found out about the grant, they only had ten days to apply, and the application had to include all the financials for the project.
“We had installed some outdoor bathrooms in 2019, so it was easy to get an application for that project,” he concluded.
The primary objective of the funding is to sustain and create local jobs, enhance provincial competitiveness and productivity, position communities to participate in future economic growth, and reduce municipal red-tape to promote job creating private sector investment.
As a result, Cereal & District Athletic Association has been approved to build four additional large, permanent outdoor bathrooms in Cereal. The council will hold a meeting later this month to decide where to place the bathrooms, but Clint said two bathrooms would be located at the rodeo grounds, one at the campground, with the council to finalize the location of the remaining bathroom.
“The plan is to use as many local businesses as possible,” Clint said. This will include backhoe work, setting in the septic and holding tanks, pouring concrete pads and welding. Once everything is finalized, Clint said the council will “start getting some quotes and get things nailed down.. The whole point of the grant is to try to get economic cash in the area.”
The goal is to have the project completed before the end of the year as the project funding must be spent on the accepted projects prior to December 31, 2021.
