NASORLO Annual Meeting Proceedings, Summary and Materials

Conference Update for you.  Our registration numbers were up a bit from 2016, with 37 states being represented and voting.  Comments from participants indicated an excellent balance between informational sessions, business meetings and strategic focus on re-authorization and ongoing funding.  We ended the meeting with an aggressive agenda for the next 18 months.  A big Thank You  must be given to John Beneke and his staff for a wonderful meeting.  The hotel was great right in the heart of downtown and overlooking the Riverfront Park and Trail and the information and tour of Pinnacle State Park was timely.  From all these experiences,  It is obvious that LWCF has been well administered in Little Rock and in Arkansas.

Administration of LWCF.  We had excellent interaction and dialogue with NASORLO member attendees and NPS  on efficiencies, administrative trends and issues and grant cycles. Many of which will help shape the NASORLO agenda in the future.  With Jan Hunt OR, volunteering to lead the NPS Modernization Committee for the coming year, these discussions will help frame the priorities for their work. One priority we will continue to work on as a high priority is to find a way to obtain a % of each years state allotment authorized for use at the state level for LWCF administration.

Training.  One thing was clearly a concern of members and that was a need for more LWCF training and dialogue.  From that discussion we learned that NPS would follow the model set up in the NW Region by hosting monthly Compliance conference calls with all Regions.  On the fourth Wednesday of each month four separate times will be set up for states to call in and discuss issues and compliance with NPS.  Nate Halubka NC will work with NCSU and NPS to host the calls. This will allow recording and exchange of information with participants.  Issues raised will be forwarded to the Modernization Committee and Training Committee ( a new Committee, chaired by Eric Feldbaum ) to develop a set of training priorities for NASORLO. These priorities will be the basis of our request to NPS for their training efforts.  Look for more information  from NPS or NASORLO on this soon.. as the first calls are scheduled for November 22nd of this year !!

                 Working with our newly established Training Committee, the organization will work on adding an information exchange element to our website.  This effort, chaired by Eric Feldbaum, will seek to set up an administrative forum to exchange and post Best Practices and exchange information between Members states and officials.  Look for more information on this in the coming months.  If any NASORLO member is interested in serving with Eric Feldbaum on the new Training Committee, contact him and/or me at the addresses in the attachment!  Your involvement is encouraged and welcomed.

                 Another decision reached at the annual meeting is we will work to add an information exchange element to our website.  This effort from the new Training Committee, will seek to set up an administrative forum to exchange and post Best Practices and exchange information between Members states and officials.  Look for more information on this in the coming months.

LWCF Manual Revision.  We learned NPS is in the process of revising the grants manual.  Therefore, they indicated the first NPS training would be after the completion of the revision with training on this revised Manual as the primary focus.  Look for this for late next year.

Officers and Board Elections:  We had an election of new Officers and the Board ( attached ).  President Imgrund will lead an excellent group of volunteers to guide the work of the organization through this most important time.  Thanks to all who had shown an interest in serving and to those elected.  A special thank you goes to Tim Hogsett, Steve DeBrabander and Susan Moerschel, all who served the organization over the past few years.  Susan Moerschel will continue to be an honorary Member and work  as a volunteer to NASORLO, and  with President Imgrund, on key issues in the foreseeable future.

Advocacy and Re-authorization Strategy.  The fact that LWCF will expire next Oct. 8, and there are five different attempts to reauthorize the program, NASORLO is ramping up it’s advocacy and seeking to clarify our message.  The 2018 LWCF resolution is one attempt to do this.  In addition, we have worked with NPRA to update and post new State LWCF Data sheets on our website.  You may also want to look at what NC did in hosting a Park Champions event.  Their materials, along with the NPRA Park Champions program presentation are also posted on our website.

                  NASORLO and the State Coalition including NASPD, will need to be highly visible and strong advocates for the program, if we are to maintain a reasonable and equitable portion of funding.  That is one reason we have continued an agreement with David Tyahla, formerly with the NRPA Government Affairs section, till the end of the year to ensure we have ongoing information and connections with Congress, the Administration and other LWCF advocates during this crucial time.  We are hoping to hold on to last years funding levels for State Assistance, plus adding the anticipated 68  million dollars of GOMESA contributions to the LWCF state grants program.  Keep checking the website for the status of this funding.

                  We will also update our Advocacy Tool Kit, available on our website, with new materials and draft letters.  This, along with our revised State Data pages, should allow all to have the materials needed to be the strongest advocate possible for the State Assistance Program at the local, state and federal levels.

                   Urban focus and ORLP.  A lengthy discussion was held on the need for a NASORLO position on the current ORLP program or whether we should offer language to implement an urban focus into the existing LWCF State Assistance Program. No decision was reached, but there seemed to be three different approaches to the issue.  Some felt the urban focus has been a part of the state SCORPS for years, and when funding levels return to reasonable levels the urban needs would be addressed.  Others thought the ORLP should be funded directly between NPS and the urban sponsors and free the state from the administration of the grants.  The third idea was to implement a greater role by the state and state officials in the process of evaluating and selecting the awards.  There seemed to be a consensus after these discussions that we needed to seek greater involvement in the process of providing input into the process, in evaluating and selecting the awardees, and generally be more involved in the program.  NASORLO through our organization and members, will seek to change the current ORLP process to improve the program.

            City Park Alliance and Mayors for Parks Infrastructure efforts.  A presentation was made by Julie Waterman CPA to highlight a series of videos on how parks should be considered vital to the infrastructure of cities.  Two of the videos were shown and those, plus three others will be posted on the NASORLO website for our advocacy efforts.

LWCF Resolution.  We also passed a new LWCF reauthorization Resolution for 2018.  This will be posted on our website after it has been officially signed by President Imgrund.  I have also place most of the materials prepared for the Annual Meeting, and presented in Little Rock , in the Member Section of our website.  The new Resolution can be found there, when completed.  It restates the NASORLO Position for permanent re-authorization, with full funding and ” no less than 40% ” allocated for state outdoor recreation grants.

NASORLO Awards.  The NASORLO President’s Award of Merit was given to Tim Hogsett, TX. for his continued commitment to NASORLO and LWCF State Assistance.  He has been the NASORLO President on 2 separate occasions and chaired this years NPS Modernization Committee.  Arizona ASLO Mick Rogers was presented with the Service To NASORLO Award for his work to restructure and revitalize the Arizona grants program over the past 2 years.  Other awards were finalized, but not presented.  It is anticipated that during NASORLO’s visit to DC in late fall, more NASORLO Awards will be announced and presented.

NASORLO IRS and Taxes.  NASORLO has been in communication with the IRS for the past five years.  We are a 501 ( c 6 ) non profit and as such have certain reporting requirements.  After discussion with IRS we began to file our taxes in 2014.  After this years submission, we are in full compliance with any and all IRS requirements.

NASORLO 2016 Fiscal Review.  Jan Hunt, Secretary of NASORLO agreed to review the 2016 expenditures and revenues to ensure they were adequate and accurate.  She reported they were accurate and reflected the uses approved by the organization.

GIS based systems for LWCF use.  NASORLO has seen a need for the development of GIS based systems to locate and digitize all state and local LWCF projects.  We undertook a pilot with Green Info Network which uploaded 26 state’s data into a retrievable system to provide an example of what our vision was of such a system.  The federal PAD US and a newly developed NPS concept called RAPIDS are underway to eventually implement such a system.  NASORLO sees such systems as invaluable for advocacy for the program and to easily show the scope of what LWCF grants have achieved.  Both of these systems were discussed and NPS hopes to have their RAPIDS data system ready to do limited testing with coming year.

2018 Annual Meeting.  It was decided that a joint meeting with NASPD in 2018 was not feasible and an offer from New Hampshire to host the meeting next October was taken under review.  More on this after NH checks out dates and conditions and gets back to the Board with their findings.