The Park County Commissioners are now committing more than $300,000 to assist Meeteetse in building a new rec center by the spring.

On Tuesday, at the request of Meeteetse Recreation Director Brodie Serres, commissioners unanimously voted to pledge another $150,000 to fund the construction costs of the building, which have increased from $1.3 to roughly $1.7 million even as the design has been slimmed to keep the costs from rising too much.

The county had previously pledged $168,000 for the project out of ARPA funds. The new funds will come out of the same pot.

"Everything is out to bid," Serres said. "We'll probably be fighting the weather a bit. We are getting down to a little bit of a timeline crunch."

Serres said the biggest frustration is before starting this second round of fund requests — she started with the commissioners — they had just about reached their funding total of $1.3 million.

She said after they started working with Groathouse and determining the actual project budget, the total for that project jumped to $1.9 million.

"We went back to the drawing board, cut almost 2,000 square feet, reduced the ceiling height to get to $1.5 million," she said.

Then at the pre bid meeting, the cost of the smaller project was again higher than expected, at more than $1.7 million. Serres said a $140,000 in-kind donation from Groathouse helped, and the Meeteetse rec district will be committing $200,000 from its more than $700,000 in reserve funds. After the county’s additional pledge of $150,000, Serres walked out just $124,000 short. Still, she said, they'll be asking for funds long after they reach that total as they still work to fulfill that initial goal. The building, Serres said, will be able to be expanded to the full space, and she said they'd love to be able to upgrade more equipment.

“We’re hoping some day to build to the full scope we dreamed of having,” she said.