The Wright City Board of Aldermen approved two grant proposals at their Feb. 27 meeting and will pay grant writer TMZ Marketing Services to move forward with the application process. 

The first of the two grants was an extension on a grant the city received last year from the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services. 

The first COPS Grant was for roughly $340,000 to cover roughly half of salaries and benefits for two new patrol officers and a new detective at the Wright City Police Department. 

The city is required to cover the remaining costs and the first phase of the grant will help cover those salaries and benefits for three years. 

Police Chief Tom Canavan said the department has already hired two of those officers and is working on hiring the third. 

“We have hired two right now, and then we’re going to apply for the grant again, which would extend that grant from three years to six years,” said Mayor Michelle Heiliger. “So we would have three additional officers on staff and we’d only pay half their pay and benefits for six years.”

If received, the extension on the grant would be for $377,000, or $122,000 over three years following the conclusion of the original grant’s period. 

Heiliger also said, since they had already received the grant once, she was optimistic they would be selected for the grant again. 

“As long as you’re doing what you’re supposed to be doing, you would re-qualify pretty easily,” said Heiliger. 

She did concede she expected eventually, as the city grows and its financial position continues to improve, they would no longer be considered for the grant. 

“There’s a certain number that’s like, there’s other communities that need this more than you do,” said Heiliger. 

The second of the two grant proposals was for a $50,000 Hometown Grant from T-Mobile, which Heiliger said they hoped to use for improvements to Diekroeger Park. 

“The hope would be that we could apply it to the pavilion, rebuilding the pavilion, replacing posts and those things,” said Heiliger. “It’s a grant that’s available to us. I think there’s a very minimal match and we could put it towards a bigger project that we needed in one of our older parks.”

The board unanimously approved the contracts, both with TMZ Marketing Services at $5,400 for the COPS grant and $5,000 for the Hometown grant. 

Alderman Ramiz Hakim did take a moment to discuss how important grant funding like this has been to the city, and how it is worthwhile even with the added expense of grant writing. 

Heiliger said while she was unsure of exactly how much grant funding the city had received recently, she said the totals on grants received for city parks alone exceeded $2 million. 

The police department had also received several grants last year, including the COPS grant and a grant for new computer equipment. 

Alderman Karey Owens pointed out how important grant writing services can be, even with high price tags, since applications can be especially complex. 

“When we look at the level of detail that are in a lot of these grants, and how just using one or two different words makes a big difference,” said Owens. “That’s why it was so important to have somebody who actually does this for a living to work with us as a consultant and a partner.”

Hakim agreed, saying grants would continue to be a priority in Wright City moving forward. 

“That’s really been a different posture of this board compared to others, where we’ve aggressively been seeking grant funding,” said Hakim.