(6/9) Thurmont Mayor Kinnaird announced at the town council's June 2 meeting that the municipality has been granted more than $99,000 in state Project Open Space money to expend on park improvements.

Project Open Space is a funding source that comes directly from the State of Maryland to the various counties, who in turn, then redistribute the funds to municipalities within the counties.

Interested municipalities then compose a "wish list" of projects, for which they would like to seek funding, and then create their own review board, comprised of the various mayors of the municipalities involved, to access proposed projects and decide, among themselves, which municipality or municipalities is/are to receive funds.

Mayor Kinnaird explained that, for this latest round, the county allocated just under $319,000 which had to go towards the acquisition of land which would be considered "open space," and another circa $319,000 which had to go towards developments proposed on "open-space" lands.

Regarding the awarding of money for acquisition, Thurmont sought $25,000 from the allotment to apply towards the purchase of a piece of property. However, he said, the "board" unilaterally agreed to award New Market the entire $319,000 towards the purchase of land, because "New Market had not received acquisition funds for several years, while Mt Airy and Thurmont had."

When it came to the allocation of the $319,000 in money for development of open-space land, Thurmont had sought: $54,357 for a new multi-use building (storage and press-box) at the Eyler Road Park; $176,250 for a new softball field at the East End Ball Park; and $30,000 in playground upgrades at the Woodland Park.

"In order to get things moving," the mayor said, "I cut half of our request for the East End Park out. Middletown responded by cutting their largest proposed project in half. Then the participants realized if Thurmont and Middletown removed their largest projects, everybody would get what they wanted."

In the end, Thurmont did get financing for the new Eyler Road multi-use building ($54,357) and for the Thurmont Woodland Park playground upgrades ($30,000).

Additionally, after approving all the municipal projects to be funded, $30,000 remained unattributed, which was then split between Thurmont and Middleton.

Thurmont's half of that split will cover the engineering studies needed for the future East End Ball Park ball field project, which the town hopes can be fully funded at some future time.

Kinnaird said, "Oddly enough, we got most of the pie on development. As always, it went very well. Everybody was very cordial, very understanding of each other's situations, and it worked out very well."