Contact your city now about Santa Clara County’s Measure B Education & Encouragement funding opportunities
By now Santa Clara County’s 2016 Measure B Education & Encouragement (E&E) funding should not be a surprise to anyone that’s reading this blog. These funds are meant to cover activities and the development and distribution of materials that are designed and intended to satisfy the following goals.
Educate, and/or encourage safe walking or bicycling for residents or visitors of every age and ability;
Communicate to residents and visitors the benefits of walking and bicycling; and communicate to school children, residents, and visitors the rights and responsibilities of pedestrians, bicyclists, and motorists.
When I was appointed to the Gilroy Bicycle Pedestrian Commission (#GilroyBPAC) in 2017, the measure had just passed. It quickly was challenged in the courts and the sales tax collected was held in escrow. The challenge was not successful and VTA’s Board of Directors recently approved the budget for fiscal years 2018-19 and 2020-21. Each city now knows the exact amount of funding they can receive each year. Both the funding agreements and grant template needed by the cities have been distributed to staff. The grant template will submitted for approval to the VTA and contains the Project Activities Description, Project Goals, and Proposed Evaluation Metrics. Once approved, your city is ready to start those programs. The funds allocated to each city is based on population and the projection of sales tax. The VTA Board sets it during their budget process. It’s a ‘use it or lose it’ funding program. Sales tax can fluctuate as well. What’s clear is the amount of funding approved for fiscal years 2018-19 and 2020-21 are approved. I am going to share the experience that I have had in Gilroy and how we have chosen to implement the program.
During our 2017 Gilroy BPAC Strategic Planning session, we decided to focus on Safe Routes To School. County Public Health was already in Gilroy working off a grant for our schools. Measure B E&E funds quickly became a hot topic and the approximate funding of $32,000 annually was reported by city staff to us. A dedicated funding source to continue the momentum created by our existing Safe Routes To School (SRTS) program was exciting and gets us on the path to a sustainable funding source. We then reported to Gilroy city council at our annual presentation about the opportunity. We continued to watch over the court challenge and waiting for the opportunity to hit the ground running when the time is right.
Two years later, at our June 2019 Gilroy BPAC meeting, we had a presentation from Lauren Ledbetter, VTA. Fiscal years 2018-19 and 2020-21 Measure B E&E funding have been approved by the VTA Board was available for Gilroy for request via the grant process. We are getting $35,648/year and that gives us $142,592 available today to spend/plan on education & encouragement. It’s important to get this program into the mid-year budget cycle because it’s a ‘use it or lose it’ program. The grant application need to provide written explanation to carry over funds over three years from a fiscal year. We are currently in FY 20. This program started in FY 18. June 30, 2020, will be the end of the three-year window to apply for the funding approve for FY 18 and later. I feel that we can do a great job sustaining the momentum we have while utilizing the savings we have built up from past fiscal years in Measure B. Gilroy City Council approved the Measure funding agreement with VTA in August 2019 so it can apply for funds.
We decided to keep Measure B E&E projects on our monthly BPAC agenda. Now it was the time to develop the programs Gilory want to request be funded. At our September 2019 meeting, our Gilroy BPAC drafted the first general work plan for Measure B E&E funds. It was a broad stroke and we tried to cover everything our city has engaged in. Our Gilroy BPAC drafts all of our documents ourselves and we don’t utilize staff time for any of them. I contacted VTA with the approved work plan and asked if it needs to go into more specific details, and I was then told a template will be used for formal submission. VTA also told me that the work plan needed to go deeper and separate into individual work plans. City Staff reported to us that they had no plans for the funding and needed a “champion” to run the program. They were at full capacity to manage other programs. After the meeting Vice-Chair Sean Reedy and I began brainstorming and drafting work plans. We always had in mind that while we wanted them to be Gilroy specific, they are written up to be used as templates for any city across the county to copy. In talking with other BPAC’s and cities we know, we quickly realized that no plans were being drafted in other cities. We have the ability as BPAC’s to be the forward thinkers and plan. Sometimes that’s not possible for city staff. They have to deal with what’s in hand at the moment. Everyone was waiting around for the “template” before they moved forward. By the October 2019 meeting, we had drafted 6 work plans. All can be found on our website http://www.cityofgilroy.org/280/Bicycle-Pedestrian-Commission and by searching Gilroy Bike Ped.
Before we advocated for the work plans approval to our city council we met with Gilroy’s City Administrator and Director of Finance. The City Administrator stated that since this is a program for the next 30 years, in order to sustain it, it needs to be entered into the upcoming Fiscal Year 2020 (FY20) Mid-Year Budget as an amendment. The Finance Director who reviewed the funding agreement and stated that it seemed to look straight forward, and no reason to believe that we shouldn't' be able to expense and then receive the funding back from VTA within 30 days. This sounds correct to me as well because I believe if VTA were to make this more difficult, then many cities probably wouldn't be bothering with the agreement for the amounts they would are receiving. At our December annual presentation to city council we recapped the year and then focused on advocating for our work plans. Our advocacy and work has paid off. During the recent Mid-Year Budget review, the program will be introduced and will incorporate the Gilroy BPAC work plans for council review and approval.
So in passing along this information, I propose the following questions to you.
Is your City ready to start spending Measure B E&E funds?
Have they submitted the grant applications for FY 18-19 funds?
If you don’t know these answers, contact your local BPAC. I am always available for questions as well. Zachary.Hilton@cityofgilroy.org #GilroyBPAC @hoseman16
This guest blog is provided by Zachary Hilton, Gilroy BPAC.