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Officials from the Colville Tribes visited with the Coulee Dam Town Council Wednesday to explain the tribes’ plan to write a comprehensive parks and recreation plan that will include all the towns on the reservation and that would be useful to all of them in seeking project funding.

When governments apply for grant or loan funding for projects, granting agencies generally require the project to be part of an overall plan. But small towns sometimes don’t have such plans in place when funding opportunities arise.

Frank Andrews, of Colville Tribal Planning Dept., and Kevin Rosenbaum, of Parks and Recreation, said their goal is to make one plan that the tribes and all the cities and towns on the reservation will be able to use.

“We’re going to try to draft one comprehensive plan that can cover everybody in Ferry County and parts of Okanogan County … to the Canadian border,” Andrews said.

He said a series of public meetings on the subject will begin in October to help get a “consensus” of public priorities for parks and recreation needs. And a survey is being drafted.

The planning department plans to submit a finished comp plan to the Washington state recreation committee in April.

Councilmember Gayle Swagerty noted the town’s own committee that works on parks and recreation had met that day with a newly engaged student consultant to help fill in the town’s park and recreation portion of its comprehensive plan.

Andrews said the tribal plan would include the western part of town, even though it’s not on the Colville Indian Reservation.

Andrews said they would like to hold the local meetings at Coulee Dam Town Hall.