The Washington State Department of Veterans Affairs is applying for federal grants from the VA to fund major capital projects, including 65% of the construction costs for a new Spokane veteran home and 90% for a state veteran cemetery in Richland. Additionally, the board discussed the potential for future federal grant dollars to support local County Veteran Service Officers (VSOs), which may become available once the policies of the Elizabeth Dole Act are implemented.
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Clark County Veterans Advisory Board · May 14, 2026 · 24:52–25:02 · Watch on CVTV ↗
Keywords: federal grant
What was said
23:49 We also are going to have to work on some road improvements. We're looking at building a traffic circle near this location. Some of the things that we've done is working with the city of Richland and working closely with them. We've submitted some requests with our congressional delegation to ensure that if there's possibilities for us to receive federal dollars to do some of that work, so we're moving forward with those requests. The city of Richland has submitted those requests with both Congressman Newhouse and Senator Cantwell to be able to ask for those federal dollars to be able to do some of this infrastructure work that we need to get done before we start doing this. We have submitted our grant application with the National Cemetery Administration. They're aware that we're gonna be doing this. Some next steps that we have is the request to take care of the site improvements. That's gonna be borne by 100% by the state, so I will be asking the state for that. We're gonna be working very closely with the city of Richland
24:48 to transfer that property over to us as we continue working on this, and then we're gonna be submitting the federal grant for the design and construction to the National Cemetery Administration to be able to build this new cemetery. The grant dollars, the VA will pay for 90% federally funded. The state has to come up with 10% state match funds. The other good thing about this is once we complete the build of the cemetery and they give us the keys to open the cemetery, as long as we've done everything correctly, the VA may pay us back for the 10% that the state provided. So ideally, what we're looking at is 100% reimbursed for building a cemetery, which is very ideal for the state. It's also an opportunity for us to be able to serve the 46,000 veterans that are living in that tri-cities area in Oregon as well. The other thing that I'd like to talk about is funding for this. Currently, how many of us
25:45 have the armed forces license plate on your vehicles? Okay, there's only a couple here in the room that I'm seeing with your hands. So what I wanted to share is that right now, if you were to purchase a armed forces license plate for your vehicle, part of those fees come back to us to be able to maintain and operate
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cross_cutting keyword 24:52–25:02 federal grant
's gonna be borne by 100% by the state, so I will be asking the state for that. We're gonna be working very closely with the city of Richland to transfer that property over to us as we continue working on this, and then we're gonna be submitting the federal grant for the design and construction to the National Cemetery Administration to be able to build this new cemetery. The grant dollars, the VA will pay for 90% federally funded. The state has to come up with 10% state match funds. The other g