Many of you already know that the Kingston Community Center Foundation submitted an application to be awarded a Washington State Community, Trade, and Economic Development (CTED) Building Communities Fund grant. You already know because so many of you voted to pledge your civic and business organizations’ funds to the project, gave and pledged personal funds, worked on the grant application, or contributed in other ways. It has been a gratifying display of community support for this project!

We will hear soon whether we have cleared the first-level of screening to be awarded the Building Communities Fund grant.

If so, we’ll be putting out a call for people to help lobby the legislature in February and March, because it’s the legislators who will be making the final decision about who gets the grant dollars. Fortunately, our legislators are firmly supportive of the Village Green project. But we’ll need all the help we can get.

Being awarded the CTED grant dollars would mean we’d shift our thinking radically, to align with occupying the new building in 2011 versus not starting construction until 2012. And it would mean a very, very busy 2009 for all of us. Wouldn’t that be a great problem to have?

For more information, contact Bobbie Moore, executive director of the Kingston Community Center Foundation at elliottmoore@comcast.net or (360) 297-2845.