BELLEAIR - The town of Belleair was recently notified that their award winning assistant town manager, Micah Maxwell, succeeded in obtaining county grant money for the Dimmitt recreation center.
Maxwell procured $100,000 in funding when he successfully applied to the 2006 Pinellas County Government Recreational Grant Program. Maxwell requested the grant money for the town's rec center, still under construction.
Twenty agencies within Pinellas County applied for the available revenue for 23 projects.
The applications for requests were reviewed by an independent panel composed of county planning and real estate employees, a parks and recreation advisory board member, and a youth advisory board member.
The panel ranked the applications according to criteria involving mission, population served, and the dependability of the agency making the request. The panel combined those scores with other considerations such as location, need and overall value to the county before granting the funds.
Maxwell also recently won a certificate of recognition for budget presentation from the Government Finance Officers Association (GFOA) for the town.
According to GFOA, the budget awards program was designed to encourage governments to prepare high quality budget documents to meet the needs of decision-makers and citizens. Award recipients are honored for pioneering efforts to improve the quality of budgeting and provide an example for other governmental bodies in the US and Canada.
Maxwell received the distinguished budget award as the town's designee for the fiscal year beginning October 1, 2005.
Maxwell was primarily responsible for having achieved the award. In order to receive it, he had to satisfy nationally recognized guidelines for effective budget presentation assessed as a policy document, a financial plan, an operations guide and as a communications device.
GFOA is located in Chicago and is a nonprofit professional association that serves 16,000 government financial professionals in North America.