 of other responsibilities. There's a really an opportunity for advocacy groups. This is what I used to do when I worked in non-profit, help do a lot of grant writing, and you can do many things. You can assemble letters of support. You can go out and get testimonials from communities that would benefit from this project. You can help with the analysis and grant writing yourselves. If the city will let you do that and lend a hand. There's a lot of different ways to get involved. And so I encourage you to work with city agencies and help them give them a hand and get up for this funding. So grant funding opportunities. At the federal level, I think everybody's familiar back in November, President Biden signed the IIJA. If you were in the session this morning, Karen Whitaker did a really great job kind of over giving overview of what this new federal surface reauthorization bill does for us. We're going to go a little bit into the, how do we get some of these programs? She gave a good overview on what they are. I've kind of distilled down what I think are the key things that we're going to be paying attention to in this program. Some of them are formula grants, right? So they go directly to DOTs by formula. Some of them are discretionary. Discretionary means competitive. It means the grant programs that people need to write an application out for to get access to it. So the first one is the transportation alternatives, transportation alternatives program, or transportation alternatives set aside. They've got many different names over the years. The biggest thing, 70% increase this morning in the session, they talked about how that number went up from getting about 70 million dollars from the feds to I think 123 million from the feds to supplement in California our active transportation program. So what this just means is more money for our program. Another one is the congestion mitigation air quality, CMAC funding. This is getting a small 10% increase and that goes straightly to MPOs to manage here in the Bay Area. A lot of that money gets flowed through the OBAC or the one Bay Area grant program. Which will be coming out in May. Highway safety improvement program. So a couple of new stipulations about this. California in all states that have greater than 15% of vulnerable road users. So people that walk or bike involved in severe collisions are now required to spend 15% of their funding through this formula on those vulnerable road users. What does this mean for California? So the Caltrans H-SIP grants, they come out every year. They come out every year. They come out every year. They come out every year. They come out every year. They come out every year. The program will just have more money for bike and pet projects. I'll get into more details about this one. And then the last one I'll just mention. This is a program that I think that Kevin this morning at Rails to Trails was mentioning it's the active transportation infrastructure investment program. It was authorized in the IAJA bill, but it wasn't funded. So that's what they were talking about. Rails to Trails Conservancies leading a big national revolutionary grant program. So there's a lot of information here on the screen. I'm not going to go through all of it. I don't want you to kind of have to read it all, but there's some tag lines. This is how I keep up with all the different grant programs out here. So the Rails grant, right? Rails grant has had many different iterations. When I first started working in Trails and bike and pet advocacy work in 2009, it was the Tiger grant program and then it became the build grant program under President Trump. So now it's the Rails program. It's a grant program that really is for large, complex, regionally significant projects. The minimum request is $5 million, up to $25 million. These things need political champions to be successful and you need to find projects that are regionally significant because just think this program is really heavily oversubscribed and they only award maybe one or two projects per state. So they're also incredibly difficult to write these grants, right? So think about your project. Is it really a game changer, a transformative project for the region? Has it been vetted? Has it had a lot of political support? And can you find a political champion, member of Congress or your senator, to go up and say, I will fight for this project, right? So that's what you need to think about when you're finding projects that are good suitable ones for raise. Safe Streets and Roads for All. This is a brand new discretionary grant program. It was part of that IAJA. It's coming out very soon. The US DOT staff are writing the guidelines as we speak. And what I understand is that the notice of funding or the guidelines that say, hey, this program is open, should be coming out next month. This program does really three things. It helps you develop a comprehensive safety plan or a Vision Zero plan. If you already have one, it'll give you funding to implement that plan, right? So this is about $5 to $6 billion over the next five years. So another great opportunity to address known safety issues that you have already documented in a plan. H-SIP, I mentioned this before, this is helping you resolve known safety issues with low-cost infrastructure, right? The whole thing about this program is benefit-cost ratio, right? So you want to find areas where you've seen severe or fatal collisions in your community and then address them with low-cost infrastructure, right? It's really, there's a lot of different scoring criteria with this one, but this is the main one that's made decisions. And again, this is going to get more money through California and the CalTransPlan grant program. The NOFO or the Notice of Funding Opportunity should be coming out possibly spring or summer this year. Some other opportunities that are not tied to federal funding, it's the American Rescue Plan, or I guess not tied to IHA, but the American Rescue Plan is one that I don't see in a lot of communities really taking advantage of for active transportation or transportation in general. This is a formula program that goes to all counties, all jurisdictions, again, by formula that they can use to recover from the economic impacts of the coronavirus pandemic, right? And so there's a link here. You can go on at Treasury.gov. There have been two disbursements. The first one happened last May and the next one will be happening next month. And so again, talk with your city managers, talk with city council members about where they're going to go to distribute that funding. A lot of jurisdictions that I've talked to are backfilling, you know, positions that they weren't able to fund in the past or using it for a lot of public health concerns, obviously, about getting notice out about vaccines and public health concerns. But if there was a nexus between maybe your tourism being affected by the coronavirus, you could use it to possibly build new trails or build new trailheads or help support businesses that are adjacent to your active transportation infrastructure. Yep. Unscheduled announcement that I realize falls under this category. For the state of California, there's a program that's launching right now. The draft guidelines are out called the regional or regional early action planning REAP, REAP 2.0. And that program is funded through this program. And that's money is at the state level run by the Office of Planning and Research. And they're actually going to be distributing money at a block grant level to MPOs. So MPOs are metropolitan planning organizations, SCAG, MTC, things like that. And they're getting a big chunk of money where basically the MPOs are going to be getting this money to do what they want with it. There has to be a nexus to the recovery of COVID. And that includes that it needs to be regionally significant and it needs to be implementation, quote unquote. But it also funds regionally significant trail planning, trail outreach, and network planning. And those funds are coming out literally the MPOs are right now starting to write their applications of what they want to do. So if you're an advocate and your target is one of the MPOs, look up REAP 2.0 and you'll be able to find some information on that. It's a brand new program that's never existed before. It's still in the works. Honestly, we're all still actually figuring out exactly what isn't eligible. So this is a really good time if you can look into it and you have someone at SCAG or MTC or any of your other MPOs, or if you're from an area that doesn't have one of those, they're going to some of the COGS, but something right there specifically that is directly going to be related to both housing and active transportation are two of the main factors and transit is prohibited. Because they say the feds are saying transit already got too much money. So it's literally only option is housing and active transportation. So that's a program that's literally right now about to hit the road and the dollars are about to start flowing there. Great. Thanks. Thanks Mark. And again, I see folks taking pictures or scribbling things down. That's fine and well. We'll make sure that this slide decks available posted on the summit website, or you can reach out to me car contact information afterwards. So I think the last one before we'll take a quick break and move on to my other colleagues here on the panel, but something else that was a great welcome surprise. Earmarks are back, right? We thought they were dead. People were asking me, my clients were saying, Jeff, should we go after an airmarker? I said, no, it's dead. It's not going to come back. And then it was. So there's a lot of great resources out here. I'm not going to rehash some really great things, but I just want to point you to a few links that I found really useful. There's a great webinar that Rails to Trails put out maybe about two weeks ago and really dives into how to go about approaching the earmarking process. They're not called earmarks anymore, right? Because that's not vogue. So member designated transportation projects. All right. And so last year members of Congress put out the request. You went online onto their project under their office website. You filled out a small form and they went through. They selected the ones that they were going to champion and that made it into the last fiscal year 2022 budget. Right. And so those are here. I've got links to the funded projects. Also all of the requests are linked here. So if something didn't make it through and you're interested in maybe following up on that, then you have a full list of those projects. The key here, my tagline start by speaking with your Congress member. Match their political needs with your project. This is political, right? There is no, there's no grant writer for these grants, right? It really is the ones there. Members of Congress need to get reelected. They have to get reelected every two years. They're looking for projects that they can bring home to shore up votes, right? Let's just be as transparent and as possible about these. So your job in the audience is to find projects. That would look good for them, right? So that's really how you mirror the two. So this is a really a purely political earmarking process, but it's another great way to get the access to funding. All right. Some state funds. The urban greening program, green stormwater infrastructure in partnership with disadvantaged communities. All right. This is really one where it needs to be a grass root led effort, working with local environmental justice communities to think about trail projects, to think about green storm infrastructure that really benefits those areas that have been disadvantaged. This is run by the California natural resources agency. The deadline just passed in March, but it's an annual program. So it's a good one to start thinking about. Again, you need to find communities who have really voiced this need. I've worked with a lot of different jurisdictions that kind of comes from city staff. Those are much harder to shoehorn in. You really need to think about what does the community call out for as a need. Kind of the cousin to this program is the transformative climate communities. The TCC program. It's run by strategic growth council. Represent right here by Mark, but this is a hundred and forty million dollar grant size back in 2020. We think that there'll be another, there's another grant deadline coming up in 2022. Again, very similar environmental justice communities shaping their future. All right. For reducing greenhouse gases and undoing and mitigating some of the effects of climate change. So once again, it's working directly in partnership with disadvantaged communities that are having a seat at the table and decision making about how these grants are spent. There's a multiple step process of getting this funding that you can go to the website and find out more. STP, the sustainable transportation planning. It funds citywide corridor and trail plans. So in order to be eligible for many of these grants, you need to have already gone through levels of design need to go through and make sure that the public is supportive of the project. In order to do that, you need to have funding out there for a planning. This is a great resource to go to. It's an annual grant program. Some of the key winning themes are projects that benefit disadvantaged communities. Mode shift is probably the most underlying issue that CalTrans staff are looking at when they're making decisions. So these are really great for citywide transit projects, citywide active transportation plans or vision zero plans. Really good for trail feasibility studies and corridor complete streets projects. Any road diet that you need to go through that might be controversial. This is a great place to go to get funding to do all of the engagement you're going to need to do and traffic analysis. TDA, article three, the transportation development act. This is a formula funding. Cities and counties will get this funding. It's usually not very much unless you're a really large city. So my tagline here is formula funding for active transportation. Use it or bank it. You can continue to accrue this funding that comes to you over time. And eventually you might have enough to be a match for one of these bigger grants or save it up for a project that's a high priority. Local partnership program. This is through the SB one funding from the state gas tanks funding. My tagline here projects that need the final piece of funding. All right. So these need to be cost effective. The key thing here is deliverable. So shovel ready. This is really what they're looking for. There's two different aspects to this part of it is formula through the state that each jurisdiction is going to get. And then part of it's a competitive grant program. The other things that they care about our safety projects, reducing VMT and greenhouse gas emissions. So bike and pet should score well and state-wide. But the key thing here is that there's already a good amount of match in hand. Right. So they don't want to be the first one in. They want to be the last funder and so you've already got to be the first one. So that's a little bit more. This might be a good one to go after. Jeff, if I may. So a little bit on the local partnership program, this part, this program was established by the state to encourage partnership and funding. And so one of the core eligibility pieces of the local partnership program is that your county or your jurisdiction must already have a voter approved, whether it's a sales tax parcel fee or toll in place. That way. Both parties are kind of coming to the table to complete a program. So that's a good piece of the program. But we don't have any of that in place. And you will, unfortunately are not eligible for this program. Thanks, Carl. OTS off of the traffic safety. Education encouragement campaigns and programs. All right. This is a program that comes up annually. There's no maximum amount, but the average grant. I went back and looked over at the last couple of years. It's about $250,000. And again, these are really wonderful for education campaigns. They're great for partnerships to reduce historic crashes. So this is a wonderful grant program. A lot of cities have their police departments apply for this funding. And that's the way that they typically have done in the past, but doesn't have to be that way. I'm going to speak as, as myself here, not as a, as a government employee. OTS grants are having like a 90% award rate. They are really high award rate. They're small amount of money. The applications are actually very simple. They're really, really sucked up by police departments. And they even use this money to go ticket people for J walking. They use it to do bike stings. This is like a tapped fund for those of you that are advocates who want to help see police reform and want to see other forms of enforcement and other forms of traffic safety. It's a small amount of money. It just takes some partnership with the local agency and say, like instead of giving $250,000. So some cops can go stand on a corner and get overtime and even if you want to get a job, it's not a big deal for crossing mid block, give it to us, help our community and really bring that forward. And it's public health agencies can apply for it and other agencies. I think this is one of those things that really is as a, as a former advocate back in my day. This is such an underutilized amount of money where it can really help your budget. You know, $200,000 to any of your local advocacy organizations can go a long way to do the work that you're already going to do. And taking that money away from the police. absolutely OTS is like such a great aspect there and it's literally a checkbox of like we'll do this we'll do that we'll do a bike rodeo we'll do bike education classes we'll do you know that and the police and yeah we'll do all those things and then they don't so I just to say that OTS has to be funded by us the question was if the advocacy groups can apply for it no but the advocacy groups can apply for the RFP if the city receives it um my my partner works for the LA county department of public health every year they get money for this and they redistribute that money to los angeles walks to los angeles county bicycle coalition and other things like that um so you can find just find a sympathetic person at a public health agency or transportation agency to really build that forward but there's this is like such an easy easy win to really shore up your budget for a year great i think it's the last one so we'll pause here that's a lot to share with you a ton of different avenues to go through and then we're going to go to some deeper dive about two really wonderful grant programs the hsc and atp so any questions in the audience if there are questions i'm going to walk to you i'm going to put the microphone up to your mouth because we're recording it there's friends waved everybody at home there's friends at home joining us so oh all right that was kind of your first set yeah sure all right questions yeah right in the back thank you all so much it's such good information question about funding cycle times like where these two year intervals or these four year intervals um and then i guess the follow-up question to that is in terms of approaching cities to partner for for example the last grant that you just referenced um is there etiquette to that great question so in my slides here are slides we've outlined kind of what the you know the cycles a lot of them are annual some of them are biannual every other year some of them are like obag right it's just kind of when the funding comes through could be every four or five years but most of them are annual and about reaching out the proper etiquette i think just the relationships that you maybe you've built as an advocacy group over time finding the staff person that you've got a good relationship to and offering and saying hey this is coming it's trying to get out as early on as possible and see you know we'd like to go after this funding what are you thinking about city council members are another good one to talk to early on you know six months in advance it's probably the right time at least so other questions about era thank you very much um logistically when you add these to the website etc make this chart etc available will you include also which of these grants are required to have the approval and or review by bicycle advisory committees pedestrian advisory advisory committees etc as one of the checkmark boxes just to make it easier for those groups to really become involved and know that they have a say in these grants it's a good it's a really good question we won't be able to do that because each city has their own different way of having involvement of their bicycle and pedestrian advisory committees or commissions or complete streets commissions it's really up to each city about how they go about involving the community in making these decisions but I think the best thing you can do is find members of council who are going to be the ones really making a decision to receive or go after this funding so that's where I'd start and some do require resolutions yeah so this is a little higher level more in terms of um how how many money is distributed and how those of us who are in um the less densely populated parts of the state can work this so for example any we're the least densely populated county in the bay area so we have fewer taxpayers per mile of road but any of the formula things go out per population not by mile of roads and then the competitive things rightly so are giving more weight to projects that are serving disadvantaged communities which ours are sort of scattered amongst the things so I guess the question is how to find a creative way to navigate that to still get our then our needs met when it seems like the two ways of divvying up money are sort of stacked against us it's a it's a good question and something that I've unfortunately struggle with a lot a lot of clients come and say we want to either they're in affluent areas and but still maybe through you know prop 13 they don't have the tax resources even though their property values are very high they don't have the the funding to do a lot of these things or in rural areas and so there are some grant programs that I've mentioned here that aren't tied to disadvantaged communities like HCEP is really certainly a good one that if you have safety issues right if you can really key in on that that's one where it's it's definitely more by the benefit cost analysis that I mentioned there is a federal you know Karen Whitaker this morning was mentioning a rural I guess a rural transportation project that I'd like to look into more I don't know enough about that but I don't know if you've got other ideas Carl or Mark you're to help with yeah Aris I was just gonna say you're kind of getting ahead of me a little bit so something that MTC is trying to do I mean because our whole goal is to try and get as much state dollar I mean as much money in general to the Bay Area for for any type of improvement and in the active transportation space since the predominant funding program is the active transportation program we're trying to explore opportunities to make it easier for jurisdictions to apply trying to help them come up with unique ways to qualify as a disadvantaged community in a certain way and encouraging them to like start doing primary data collection where there are pockets within larger areas where that wouldn't qualify as a disadvantaged community so we're starting to think about that trying to work within the the guidelines that exist to to help our jurisdictions yeah let's take one more and then we'll keep going on we'll do more Q&A so if you can't get to you we'll we'll save it anybody else want to ask a question now all right I think we turn things over see where we are to me all right Carl you're up next you want the clicker all right so we have a lot of people file in during the first part of the presentation and so I just want to take a quick poll the room again who's representing a non-profit organization and what about a government agency or a city something about all right and private sector okay so distribution is still about the same with a little bit more private sector for folks and so again I'm Carl Anderson with the Metropolitan Transportation Commission the Bay Area Metropolitan Planning Organization I manage state-funded programs for MTC and one of which is the active transportation program the active transportation program was established in 2013 by the California Transportation Commission and it essentially consolidated a lot of the siloed little buckets of active transportation funding and now created a competitive program for the state so this this is a snapshot of what the current cycle looks like the the ATP program is a four-year program that is adopted every two years and we are in the middle or we're at the beginning of ATP cycle six and ATP cycle six applications are due later this summer on June 15th and here's a snapshot of the federal fund of the state fiscal years that funding is available and how the distribution of funding is split up so the active transportation um pot of money is split into three categories 50% of the funds is managed by the state which is the CTC where they evaluate their the whole pool of projects and award funding there there's 325 million available in that pot of funding 10% of the overall program is what's called the state sorry the small urban and rural program so 10% of the overall funding goes to jurisdictions and counties that are outside of a MPO and that pot of money is the light blue color here at the bottom which would be 65 million dollars which is available there and then the remaining 260 million dollars goes to the 10 large MPOs throughout the state for them to manage their own regional competitive program and so my role at MTC I managed MTC's regional competitive program for our share we have 55 million dollars available this cycle um historically projects that have been successful are highly cost effective they include projects that are closing some sort of gap in your city or county's um biker or pedestrian network projects that prioritize significant safety improvements so if there's a project that um will actually alleviate some sort of safety concern or an area where there's a significant amount of crashes those really score well in the ATP program and projects that are a combination of infrastructure and non-infrastructure project uh programming so projects where you are implementing some sort of new improvement in your community and then you're coupling that with some sort of education or outreach initiative to you know show your community how to use it and additionally the other project types that has historically scored well are complete street style projects where you're accommodating all users on the on the road network or the pedestrian or the bike network now I say historically because ATP is a very oversubscribe program which has now made it extremely competitive and so as project sponsors are trying to figure out the ATP my message to you today is that the engineering itself no longer tells the full story that will not get your project scored what matters is your engagement with your community you telling the state and MTC about how this improvement was actually called for upon by your community they were engaged and involved in the development of this project and how it's actually going to benefit their daily life um those projects that are starting to tell that story craft that narrative are what we're chart what we're starting to see being funded in the active transportation program um since we're on the sixth cycle we've seen pro projects increasing cost uh seeing projects uh well because projects are increasing in cost the state and MTC are funding fewer projects which may be a good thing maybe a bad thing I mean it's kind of hard to tell until we get more money in the program um and so since that's the state of the ATP right now I kind of want to talk about in my next set of slides about well a what makes your project successful but also what is MTC doing or what are other people doing and what can you do to help jurisdictions um navigate this new funding arena and so one of our newly started initiatives we started in cycle five um was to actually implement some sort of technical assistance to jurisdictions like Jeff alluded to in the very beginning comments is that city staff are overstaffed they're not here today they're not here to digest digesting all this information you the advocates are and so we're doing our best to reach out to jurisdictions that need some support or need some application grant writing assistance to help them navigate what looks good on their application or what type of project even looks good or encouraging them to reach out to your NGO or their local advocacy organization and their community to get a project that works for the community that can actually score well um there is a lot of text on these slides feel free to take pictures um we'll make sure we'll get this um to you but there are also hyperlinks in this section and so the second bullet here includes two uh best practices resources that MTC published about I guess nine months ago and one of them is um an infographic that shows you um where you should be in your application development timeline if you are going to pursue ATP as a grant for your community I don't know if this has a laser I don't see it but anyways essentially we we're right here call for projects has already gone out and jurisdictions should be working on their application now for this moment you as advocacy organizations or nonprofit organizations should be reaching out to your city and say hey are you considering ATP if so what can I do to help work on your application do I need to connect you to any sort of community do have you done your public engagement um what types of meetings have taken place all those questions that's what you need that's what you need to be asking kind of in this moment and if if if you're not there or if the city that you're working with isn't there then start at square start at square one and start thinking about ATP cycle seven or APTP cycle eight um the other uh handout that we published recently was what our MTC Bay Area best practices so the active transportation prioritizes investment in disadvantaged communities the bay area proportionately to the rest of the state doesn't have as many disadvantaged communities under the current metrics that exist in the active transportation program and so that's one of our perennial issues in the bay area and so we compiled some resources or just some basic kind of narratives to help you uh think about that question a little bit more um robustly so whether that is actually doing primary data collection for certain um pockets of your community that um doesn't qualify in a larger disadvantaged community so like up in wine country so Sonoma and Napa where we have pockets of very low income day laborers that live in very uh I don't I don't know like the best way to describe it sorry um where they're in areas where there's aren't even sidewalks I mean if you show in your application that say hey we have this pocket community yes it's in Napa Valley or it's in Sonoma Valley but these are the people that are actually going to and from work every day if you show that in your application then you can actually provide a constructive narrative saying that this investment from the state will improve lives of the disadvantaged community members in our jurisdictions uh now to the technical side of the piece of the application this may sound obvious but you really got to reach out to your jurisdictions that are applying and making sure that they are doing all of it make sure they're answering every question as thoroughly as possible make sure they're not cutting and pasting responses from one question to the next and making sure that they are reading their rubric and what they're being scored on um and then one other thing that is super helpful is adding as much information as possible just because there's not a box with that asks for photos doesn't mean you can't add photos of your community using some derelict infrastructure or adding data adding maps showing pictures of your outreach events and including all of that that way you're telling a holistic version of what your community needs and how it'll improve their day-to-day lives and then number four proofread the application it sounds obvious but there are critical errors that may mess up the whole narrative of your of your question or of your application yeah and this is just kind of some summary points about what makes a successful applicant I I'm not going to go through and read all this stuff but one of the other things that I do want to highlight here is making sure that your project or that your community's project is aligning with both state and regional goals that's something that changes every you know few years with a new administration or anything like that and one of the things that we're seeing at least with this cycle is the governor's impetus to draw a connection or nexus with affordable housing or low-income housing in your community so yes your project may be in disadvantaged community but are you also connecting that project to something that is going to benefit an affordable housing development or have a nexus with a low income community in a specific area of your city the other efforts that we're seeing pop up in guidelines are well the recently adopted cap tie which is the california action plan for transportation or wait I have stated partner climate climate action plan for transportation infrastructure there it is okay so all right and and that is identifying all sorts of goals to align transportation investments with greenhouse gas emission goals and better climate outcomes and so we're starting to see more more of an emphasis on that in the ATP application let's see and again answer all questions and sub-questions review all the application material and score and rubrics and that should put you in a decent place this is the timeline of the current cycle most notably here is that June 15th is that is the deadline which is 68 days away so if you are already engaged with your jurisdictions awesome if you're not get in their door right after this talk or if something isn't quite ready yet then start communicating with them to talk about projects for cycle seven cycle eight here in the presentation I've consolidated some resources both from at the state level so the ctc's active transportation web page cal trans is active transportation web page where they kind of outline a lot of more of the technical resources the active transportation resource center is funded by the ATP and that is a state level resource center that provides flash trainings or additional resources to help you navigate the ATP whether it's the application or project delivery those types of things and then finally MTC ATP web page where you'll find resources about disadvantaged communities in the Bay Area which we refer to as equity priority communities we're formerly known as communities of concern and we also have a technical assistance page where you'll find those two documents I outlined before and any resources for the upcoming calls for projects okay thanks Carl that was a great rundown of ATP well one other thing I'll just mention ctc does a really wonderful job of posting all of their scoring rubrics and it puts you in the mind of the reviewer all right it gives you all of the different things that you'll be scored on and it's the instructions for the reviewer so you need to really download this this is when I work with my staff on grant writing we download that and that is our bible right we really follow that religiously because we want every point is precious in this grant program so you really need to take a look at that let's let's go to questions here yep I'll uh let's see over here that's okay it's okay what role does data play in um any of these applications how important is it to demonstrate obviously demonstrating ROI is important but um yeah so yeah data is definitely a big part of the action transportation program I'll speak to that first and Jeff I don't know if you want to speak about any of the other programs but uh in the action transportation application the biggest section where you're showing a lot of your community data is uh the the crash and safety data that's there a lot of questions are asked there another part where you can include a lot of data is your public engagement question where you're actually showing and cataloging the quantity the amount times that you've been engaging with your community and how many people have been participating and I think those are the two pieces where data showed up the most um trying to think through the whole application yes so you yeah for the crash for the safety chapter uh chapter it's how big the application is accessing your switters database accessing these switters database to pull in any sort of crash and safety information um yeah yeah yeah yeah so data is I think critical kind of a piece of this and analyzing the data is helpful in telling the story uh Tim's which is the transportation was a traffic Berkeley has Tim's you go on Tim's it pulls the switters data it's all the collisions right and there is an ATP specific program that makes it really easy to pull on your crash data and it already sums it up and so it's something you can append to an application so crash data is available disadvantaged communities there's a lot of different publicly available resources out there calen virus screen 4.0 the healthy places index are easy to follow and just type in your community that you're working in and you can find kind of how how it fits through that some of the larger ones I mentioned earlier some of those federal grants do require like the raise grant requires like a benefit cost analysis and that's really why I mentioned it's so expensive it's doing a lot of that heavy lifting of analysis I asked because we are in kind of a liaison position we're in we create programs working with advocacy and also jurisdictions of a whole bunch of different sizes but often we get questions like or we hear we don't know where to get the funding from we don't know what the documentation needs are and so because what we do does document a whole bunch of stuff it's helpful for us to know so that we can talk to our communities effectively and advise them the cities and advocacy so thanks other questions yes right here I live in the city of panol uh just a small city and I've been advocating for years that the city be more active about applying for grants and my experience has always been I'll ask I'll give the city heads up a grant's coming up and typically the city will respond and say well we don't have the staff we we don't have the bandwidth to apply for grants so very rarely does the city even apply for grants but when they do there's no you mean it sound like there's a lot of collaboration between residents and activists in the city or advocates and staff which is hopeful to me but I I always assumed that that wasn't appropriate and so I didn't they made it made me feel like it wasn't appropriate that let them do their job leave them alone and and I didn't feel like the people that were advocating for these sorts of things in the community were really welcome to be part of the process but you're making it sound like it could be more collaborative yeah I would say that's uh traditionally how just departments of transportation and public works departments had operated and and what I am trying to express today is that we need to change that because that's not working and so my my role at MTC has been telling cities like hey if you want this funding you start need you really need to reach out to your community and start talking with them about what their needs are not just about what you think is best for your your capital improvement plan and so I also do want to say that it's not just the city that can apply you can also get in partnership with your local school district or a local health organization and then you can jointly apply with the city so if you that could be another opportunity or way for you to make inroads to get an application on the books and say hey look I've partnered with the with our public health department or our school district we need you to help deliver the project but hey we'll write the application we'll put it all together but they still need to be at the table for it yeah um so I work with I'm a tenant rights advocate in San Francisco I work with uh in public housing um and with the hope SF project so it's the mass of redevelopment of all public housing or the four biggest sites in public housing in San Francisco one of the things is that as these sites have been redeveloped they're dramatically dropping parking spaces um and so forcing residents to figure out what do you do um and uh add to the sites that have already been redeveloped this is becoming like a really big issue with tenants for like what the hell um I started working with tenants on bike riding and so we also have a really good relationship with like local city supervisors etc and staff but would that be something in terms of like getting a whole like integrated program of like getting cargo bikes getting electrified bikes etc into public housing for tenants as this shift is happening with the redevelopment is that something like this could be that with that correlate does that work with us right so the active transportation program doesn't fund bike purchases um of the list of programs that Jeff had presented and that I'm thinking of in my head right now I can't identify one uh state or federally sponsored program that does fund bike purchases um I do know or AHC does a few minutes we'll we'll talk about there um but I do know that there are um private party private entities that do do that and I I don't think anyone's really done a consolidation of what funding programs exist in the private sector for active transportation improvements um but I I have a feeling there's some out there and we'll let mark talk about the AHC program in a bit I will just say directly to your question I can't remember who funded it but I know the city of Santa Monica has a this is not my work currently but um that there's a zero emissions program in the city of Santa Monica that involves buying like pedicabs and electric bikes for deliveries and um seniors having access so I know however they funded it uh was and it was funded by a state I believe a state program um so are you from Santa Monica to answer to have the answer to that hold on hold on hold on hold on hold on hold on no there are people online so you're gonna uh there's lots of programs if you get creative across the state and at the federal level that you can pay for bike share purchases and also for um uh particularly e-bikes I think it's a hot area right now I think they're the the um cap and trade funding that's I don't know what the acronym is but is um in Los Angeles there was there's funding that's actually just being used today uh for purchasing e-bike um for e-bike library so there are there are opportunities uh we can talk later if you want to you want a list I think it's I think it's a really timely question because I'm getting clients right now asking about e-bike subsidies we're we're working with San Mateo County which also does not score typically well for ATP they have a self-help tax measure and they're using some of that to fund through their TDM call for projects uh a couple e-bike subsidy programs so I think we're gonna see a lot more of that it's probably something we need to to take a look at other questions for ATP is there a limit of how many applications an agency can submit and score well on uh there's a limit on how many they can score well on that's the funding limit uh but no there's not a limit on how many applications a city can submit or a request size as long as there doesn't exceed the amount available great other questions yes um my question was just about the the funding that used at the beginning like the the split I'm just wondering how does that fit into like Governor Newsom's 500 500 million extra into this so I will say that there are two proposals that have been identified by Governor Newsom to augment the active transportation program by 500 million dollars independently uh one of which was identified in his draft draft January budget proposal there was 750 million dollars identified for active transportation improvements 500 million of which would go to the active transportation program another 150 million for a pilot program funding uh bike highways or bike boulevards that is just up in the air until the budget is actually adopted so that will require negotiations with the legislature before we actually know if that's gonna hit the ATP the other one admittedly I don't know too much about but is a separate initiative proposed by Governor Newsom to augment the program by 500 million dollars and I think that that is going to require a separate legislative action I think it's some kind of like standalone bill I don't know if anyone in the crowd knows otherwise if that's right or not but it's just kind of it's up in the air until it's a reality and if that does actually hit the program then it'll follow the same funding split or funding distribution um as um is already outlined in the legislation let's uh let's go on to Mark's session and then we'll do more q and a how about that all right hi everybody Mark Caswell um and we'll get started in one second uh just a heads up for those of you especially um Kent I think especially you um the I I many years ago signed up to be a volunteer reviewer for the act of transportation program um I just checked in with with the staff and they said yeah they're looking for more volunteer reviewers it's a really interesting thing you get paired up with somebody who doesn't live near you your review 10 to 15 applications that are not in your area um and you kind of start from scratch and learn about that and you rank them and they get so many that they need volunteer folks so um I'm not sure if the websites if there's still a place I know I actually found out about it from streets blog back many years ago um and I always recommend folks that if you want to learn how the sausage gets made volunteer and you can actually help make that sausage and then you know how to write a better one in the future both at the state and regional level so I'm looking for volunteers for anyone in an empty sea area or the bay area and then the state I was looking for anyone across the state and it's and it's like it's like 50 ish hours over the period of like a month and it's a long that you come home from work and you're like all right I got to open this one which do that end of your comment about data I'll just say good to have a lot of data good to have a lot of information also don't waste people's time by adding a ton of junk because they literally are volunteers and their people who are doing this because they care they're people like you they're people who work at government agencies nonprofits and things like that so you always want to kind of be succinct clear um is really a key factor there but I would say um I don't know Laurie should I come talk to you if they want to sign up so yeah and consultants are prohibited just a heads up because I got kicked out when I became a consultant all right so Mark Caswell I'm with the strategic growth council for those of you that weren't in the room earlier strategic growth council is part of the office of planning and research which is part of the governor's office so I'm three levels in a lot of acronyms there and I'm speaking today to talk about the affordable housing sustainable communities program ahsc is what we call it the state some people call it ASIC but we call it ahsc so ahsc is a program that is funded by the greenhouse gas reduction fund which the someone had mentioned earlier about 20 of the cap and trade funds that are related to pollution 20 of that funds the affordable housing sustainable communities program it's about 500 million dollars a year last year it was 800 million because we moved two years together this year we're expecting to be 500 but similar to ATP there's another 300 million that is in the governor's budget that if approved by the legislature will put us back to 800 million um so that's a lot of money and every year we're on rounds we're on uh round seven right now because ours is annual while ATP is every other year um so the program is managed by the strategic growth council in partnership with the housing and community development program uh hcd and the california air resources board because it is funded by greenhouse gas reduction fund reducing greenhouse gases is a key component there um and a really important aspect and this was one of the challenges when we created the cap and trade fund at the state of california um we said you know one of the things we need to do is by building affordable housing near transit and near key destinations where people can walk and bike and take transit safely is one of the best ways to reduce ghgs so rather than using the money to fund some other programs you know desalination or whatever this is a really important way to really bring an urban planning um transportation focus to the program and bring that forward and we all know that we're in a housing crisis we're all in we're in a climate crisis we're in a housing crisis and we're in a traffic safety crisis and this really hits all three of those which is why i'm really proud of the program and proud to be a partner uh working on this so i'm going to go into some detail of how the program works and what you need for the program and then i'll talk a little bit about how uh communities can access this and build upon this so as i said it's about 500 to 800 million dollars a year the ask the maximum ask is 30 million dollars per project 20 million of that goes to the housing 10 million of that goes to biking walking transit so when you're applying you have to be in partnership with a developer and as the local jurisdiction that's going to build the biking walking um and maybe the transit agency to do the transit maybe not um and then it also does fund programs um including community bike purchases bike share uh bike education programs things like that in there um it's kind of like hey you're building affordable housing you have to build 50 percent of the am i and then if you add some bike lanes you get points and if you add some transit and you get some g hd reductions you get points and if you add some community programs you get points and there's a way to get more and more points up to 100 point scale similar to atp um but there's 100 point scale there so again i mentioned you know we've had this number you can see it's grown and grown and grown year over year um as i mentioned round six was kind of two years combined um because of covid there was some delays there so we had to mush it together um and we're just starting round seven round six was awarded in uh in january um so the overarching goal is that we're intending to reduce ghg emissions um since the funding comes from ggrf there's a couple statutory requirements 50 of the funding has to go to disadvantaged communities really as we've used that word a lot here but we didn't really unpack what that is um for most programs i believe for atp um there's a senate bill five three five that made a thing called the calin virus screen and that has a map that tells you what percentile of pollution burden you are by the census tract and so there's a census tract level or a city level and if you're in the top 75th percentile then you are considered a disadvantaged community um it's not a based on income plays a factor in there pollution plays a factor in there a lot of different categories in there so there's a lot of talk of dax or dac's um so this and 50 percent has to be spent in the disadvantaged community and 50 percent of the funding has to go towards housing we also are required to do one tribal project um we usually only get one a year so if you can get a travel project you're probably gonna win as long as you score at least a minimum of like a d you have to get like 60 points to do that so um we're trying to encourage more tribal if you're with a tribal entity and you want to talk please come and talk to me because i want to really work on that um and then we also have to do these eight geographic regions it's a weird breakdown it is not tied to MPO it's tied in a different way this is something that was established by the council to help really spread this it's a statewide program we really don't want to only be funding in dense areas um round six awards the map's really hard to see but you can see those green dots across the state there you can see that there's a lot of projects that were funded we awarded a total of 36 projects uh this coming the cycle um i couldn't remember for 36 or 37 um each of which was you know 72 million for central coast 255 million for los angeles and orange county um bay area got 278 million dollars this was all last year this happened in january out of 53 yeah so only 53 applied and 36 got it this is not to not to not just maligned atp i used to write atp but there's like a 10 success rate it's really hard to win in atp but when it comes to hsc it's a more than 50 success rate we smooth you know we double together so it's usually around 20 to 30 this is why i brought mark here all right it's because i think a lot of our conversations is all about atp it takes up a lot of the room this is a program that my clients rarely come to me and ask about but i've been telling and trying to spread the word and hopefully we can evangelize you to go out and spread the word as well thanks Jeff and on top of that it's funding affordable housing and it's funding transportation which are like as uh as many years ago the transform organization in here from transform today you know they always used to say uh you know active transportation and affordable housing is peanut butter and chocolate they go good together they're both great but they're even better together um and so i stole that from them many years ago but we awarded you know this is actually we actually awarded 808 million dollars last year which is a huge number and we're doing that year over year over year awarding millions of dollars here for housing and transportation so how do we get there so this is actually a project that is built this is not a stock photo i know it looks like it um but that is actually a project called spring haven it's in the willowbrook community of of los angeles in the unincorporated county unincorporated can apply tribal folks can apply um you need to have uh the housing has to be 50 percent area median income that can be calculated with a couple at rate that market rate units and then a bunch of extremely low income low income they just need to have a funding mix of 50 percent i'm not a housing person i don't really understand that 50 percent am i let the developers figure that out um there are a lot of developers out there link housing meta housing bridge housing um there's a million of these groups out there that are doing especially the non-profit affordable housing organizations they would love to get another 20 million dollars for their project and be able to get that up and over their thing um you have to have three of the four sides have to be developed already we're not building sprawl this is infill this is about saying we're doing it here we're doing it where there's already existing so empty lots are especially important if you as a community know that and then the housing has to be within a half mile of a transit line there's kind of different categories of which one you can fall into this program if it's higher than 15 minute headways during peak hour you're a tod uh if it's less than 50 minute headway but still fat but still often it's another category and then there's a rural category as well because we've got to spread the love around the whole state since the state program um and the density level is usually like 30 units per acre if you're rural it's 15 per acre which is still a lot but not as much but so there's a lot of that and because i know robert prince who's not in the room has mentioned this before i just want to specify it requires that there's at least one bike parking spot for every two units so we're requiring bike parking in all these affordable housing units that's a baseline you don't get points for that you got to do it um you also have the the the challenge for all of us in this room is that the developer has to have 90 of their funding already established they have to know where they want to build they have to have a design for it they have to have that property as owned and they have to say yeah we got about 90 of our funds and we're going to tip it over with 20 and they can go and apply for other funds after that but a developer is really important here um and i know some folks bristle at talking about developers but we're talking about developers for affordable housing and a lot of non-profit affordable housing and as i said they get 20 million and then the local jurisdiction gets the other 10 million to do the biking walking and other stuff there there's also trees and some other things um and the best part about it is like i'm a planner i hate being a planner i want to be a doer i've done everything i can to stop saying like i want to write another plan and put on a shelf and have no one actually implemented in 10 years and it just sits there and collects dust the thing with this is if you get the money you have to build it within five years and i was in a meeting literally once where a developer was sitting there with an unnamed transit agency and they said well but what if you don't end up building that bike lane what if enough people complain and cry about the bike lane and say no don't take away my parking and you guys decide not to build the bike lane um like you know what's gonna happen if we've built the housing we want our 20 million um and the developer looked and smiled and said well then we'll just sue you it's like and i was like oh crap okay and then the city's now going to pay 20 million to the developer to do that um that was it's kind of scary um but it's really great because it's like you're binding your hand together you're in a joint liability agreement and you have to build it within five years um and that's i think and the thing is they can build the bikeway or the sidewalks or the transit quickly and then the housing can be built but everything's gotta be done by five years as i said it's great to do planning it's great to do engineering and design work but like i'm ready to see things on the ground um we all have good ideas let's get them built so as i mentioned 100 points score 30 points go to your greenhouse gas reductions dirty secret here biking and walking have very minimal ghg reductions compared to buses um a buying a new bus taking a diesel bus off the road that's operating 12 hours a day polluting a lot taking one bus and making it electric and looking at the number of people that are served on that bus compared to how many people are served by a new sidewalk or a bike lane it ends up blip there that's the way the data shows from the greenhouse gas reduction so so that is always a challenge but we require you have to build bike lanes to get points so 30 points for greenhouse gas 15 for narrative um you know as carl was mentioning it's about getting that right and really telling the story there and then 55 points for other policies that includes like this coming year we're going to have things like you know internet access for the residents of the units we're going to have you know digital literacy programs anti displacement strategies how many bike lanes you're building if you're building trees if you're putting in bus shelters a lot of things like that and you get extra points for all of those um you have to have if 25 of your funding is for bike walk you get six points so that's a big chunk of money that you're really like finding a way to do that really helps if you're just building the housing you're not going to win you're going to get 30 to 40 maybe 50 points there so you've got to do this bike walk stuff so finding a way to connect those two there is really important and you have to build at least a half mile of context sensitive bikeway just want to acknowledge like we talk about building bikeways and building a mile of bikeway and that can mean like sharers on the 45 mile an hour street no we don't do that and this year i'm actually gonna i believe we're getting rid of sharers only they won't even be considered anymore as a considered a legitimate bikeway sharers only is not they i said i literally said i said that'll be my applause line so like no you want to if you're doing sharers i want to see some real road diets i want to see some real reductions in like you know improved roundabouts and things like that so we're going to make it harder to get because sharers are cheap and they're not very effective so we're building that forward in a big way and some people are going to push back on that so please speak up if you're out there so project milestones we're right now about to have our second round of stakeholder sessions these are people who've applied before and we're building that forward if you want to be involved ahsc at sgc.ca.gov i know it's terrible just google it also we're about to release a policy paper where we're laying out things like that shallow concept um and then the draft guidelines will be released in may to august and come october of this year is when the NOFA will be released so right now if you're trying to get involved in this right now it's a little earlier than ATP um what we're really trying to do is if you know someone who is in your city and they're saying geez there's not enough money to implement the things in our bike plan they need to go talk to their people across the hallway in the housing department and say do you know a housing project that's getting built that's affordable housing that would like to have 20 million dollars awesome how about we get them 20 million dollars we get me 10 million dollars and we build the bikeway and you can bring that together there so you're bringing them money they just need to go talk to their partners in the housing department we all know we want to build affordable housing and so it's really good to bring that together and i think i'm at time i will just say to the dast question this is where things get a little tricky one of the benefit one of the things that we're trying to do is not over concentrate poverty so by building affordable housing in low income communities is concentration of poverty simultaneously giving a bunch of money to rich higher income high opportunity areas uh is also kind of a sticky situation but our program does not give you points for being a disadvantaged community so folks who are saying they're not in a disadvantaged community but want to build affordable housing in these high opportunity areas you actually will benefit this program over other programs because of that we don't give you points for being that but it is a really interesting balance there and as i said we have to do 50 in disadvantaged community but we also have to build in high resource communities and it's a directly at odds direct contradiction but there's no penalty for being a higher income area because you're building affordable housing for folks there so that is my main part i'll do a few questions let's uh let's wrap i've got five more slides and then we'll finish up the last 15 minutes with q and a how's that all right thanks y'all been really patient there's been a lot coming at you i just want to wrap up here some grant writing strategies for success so as i mentioned before you know i've had all the hats i've i've written grants before as a nonprofit i've written grants as a private sector i've uh worked on public sector side reviewing the grants and being the guy with the money to hand out this is kind of what i go through when i think through scoping projects all right so a novice grant writer will ask is my organization eligible for this grant program if you want to take your level up and become a pro you ask who can i partner with and am i stronger if my project crosses municipal boundaries it's always harder multi jurisdiction projects are always hard to do but for a funder who wants to spread money around remember you need to think in the mind of that funder it looks better on their part a pro a novice would say what projects are eligible a pro will ask is my project competitive right it's not just that it's eligible lots of things are eligible but you need to go back and look through that scoring list who's actually getting the funding right is it competitive what projects are most often selected and what do they have in common what does the scoring criteria say again go back to the scoring criteria right i've i've read a lot of grants when i was a funder telling a wonderful story really compelling but you didn't follow any of the scoring criteria and you got a two right so sorry what match is required a more important question is how much can my organization afford to provide all right don't meet the minimum can you go and exceed that again these funders i want to spread their money around to as many projects as possible so if you come in especially if you're a wealthier community if you can come in with 30 or 40 percent it makes you look like a much better candidate for that funding what other funding sources can you leverage what other private sector can you go after whether tech funding can you get to contribute when is the grant due right that's always a very important question sure but more importantly is how much work needs to be completed in advance there are a lot of long lead items public outreach you can't do that overnight and do it meaningfully right if things need council resolutions you need to get on their agenda well in advance right there's a lot of work design right if you need concept designs or cost estimates those can't be done in two weeks and who will complete it so again if your staff don't have the capacity to do that start to look for help look for nonprofits to help out look for private sector to help out where can i find the grant guidelines i think more importantly is who can i speak with from the funding agency when i was in public sector it was my job to go out and meet with folks and talk about my grant program and that's what Carl and Mark are here to do all right so go with them and talk about your project there's a lot that's not stated in the grant guidelines the grant guidance have a lot of information you definitely want to read those and know those every single letter of it but start talking with staff early on and especially in between cycles are they able to join a site visit or review a draft you know caltrans sustainable transportation planning grants they will actually caltrans staff will read your proposal your draft before you submit it and give you feedback before they go to review it how great is that so my last four start early if you remember anything start early be aware of long the lead items tell a compelling story Carl was talking about this before mark was mentioned this tell a compelling story use it use data site evidence you know use research use your analysis use your photos use your testimonials what i really want to see are people taking youtube videos of folks that are living in these communities and hearing from them directly and then post that youtube link in your proposal anticipate and mitigate red flags funders are looking for reasons not to fund your project because they don't want to end up with a project that's going to go belly up so anticipate and mitigate those red flags what does that mean put yourself in the shoes of the funder do you have the right of way under public control if not how are you going to do that if you've not gone through a sequel or environmental clearance what are the steps you're going to do what are things that the funders are going to be thinking about that you can already say i know this might be a concern here's where we're going to address it that puts them into a lot better state of deliverability and finally be persistent right you're not going to win every grant that you go after so request a debrief revise and reapply right it's just like suntan lotion sometimes you've got to put on multiple different coats and sometimes it comes through so be persistent and that's it this is our contact information we've got another 12 minutes of your time thanks a lot who's got questions briefly before moving to questions i know a lot of you have a lot of things on your plate so at a minimum i just ask you to download this presentation and just mail it and email it to your city staff just so they even have it questions yeah thank you all very much for your presentation i had one question i think it was for mark at some point you mentioned you're giving more points for a a bus versus you know pedestrian cyclist etc and that argument was based on greenhouse gas emissions and i was wondering you know given the difference between greenhouse gas emissions being a global issue and and local pollution being a separate issue what was the motivation behind that argument you know the or the system of giving an electrified bus you know more points than walking and biking you know we should somewhere taking the consideration also that the electric bus has some impact on greenhouse emissions as well maybe not local pollution yeah yeah um the short of that is that the greenhouse gas quantification method is is created by the california air resources board and there's a bunch of them i think atp has one even though i don't think there's points directly tied to it but ultimately they have it's based on census data vmt reduction and type of trip that's taken and you know this the national census data says well the average bike trip is 1.2 miles and you know 0.2 of the population takes a bike so when you add that in it's like oh well there's a minimal amount and that number is different in oakland it's different in los angeles it's different in different you know different places but there's kind of a data there and they have to come up with some data and that's the data that was chosen but one of the good parts is that we value our partners there and we work with them closely to make sure that we're complimenting and it's kind of counter balancing but it's kind of complimenting where we're giving the points for the bike lanes and giving points for sidewalks because they are not quantified in the greenhouse gas reduction fund the same applies to the internet uh same applies to anti displacement and so we're having this balance where you know we only have 100 points and you cut that pie into bits and some of it is greenhouse gas and then some of it is other things that we want that don't get you points in the ghg quantification and so it's kind of um a way that we're intentionally trying to do a one or the other i have a five-year-old you know it's like eat your broccoli and you get a chocolate you know and kind of like figuring out ways to do both um in there so hi i'm representing a non-profit uh we uh sued uh caltrans when they were building the caldicado tunnel and we got awarded eight million dollars and we got a whole list of projects from one to 50 and our project was two to build some sidewalks the community that has nothing and oakland bill designed it but then they ran out of money because they spent on lower priorities how do you think we can we everything is designed it's it's shovel ready how can we get this bill you might ask you that i'm thinking hcp but yeah it's a good question i'm not knowing this this project area well enough i think you just got to find either folks the local city council person i think is where i'd start with that okay then i think you're gonna have to go through staff uh and get them involved or find a coalition a larger coalition to make this a more priority yeah unfortunately i don't have the the silver bullet some things that just don't have the political support are really hard to kind of overcome overcome that yeah more questions all right hi my question is about projects that are shovel ready versus projects that are not shovel ready and the atp application so it's my understanding that both shovel ready and not shovel ready projects can apply they're both eligible however eligibility as you said is not the same as competitiveness and the ones that are already shovel ready are probably more competitive than the ones that are not so my question is for those projects that are not yet shovel ready it's atbs maybe not the best place for them to look for funding what what are some other funding programs sources of grant money for projects that need to get shovel ready to get them shovel ready all right so i'll take this one um so in mtc's regional competitive program we do prioritize projects that have already completed have completed their environmental process the state however it does not um require that nor is it a scoring criteria so overall it may it may it may look more attractive but that um they the state has funded plenty of projects as well as mtc that are beginning their environmental process or still need to go through engineering um i yeah so that that isn't necessarily entirely true for the after transportation program most of them come in for environmental too so most of them are for the full project all the way starting an environmental i have more questions one one thing on that matthew i'm not sure where you're where you're based or not but i know um in my previous role the riverside county and their the local funds you know they kind of have extra points that they can give to whatever category they want and riverside county wanted to see results and so they just said if you're shovel ready you get an extra 10 points at the local level and they just said we want to see it built we don't want to do the plans and so the riverside projects um you know we're literally if it was shovel ready you might not win at the state level but then at the local level you jumped up by 10 points which would be enough to usually push it forward so sometimes the whether it's mtc or the other mpo's will sometimes make shovel ready an additional category so worth noting depending on where you live just a question on tcc grants maybe for mark um i just i i was googling like is that something that agencies and nonprofits should look at for planning for active transportation infrastructure is that something that you know is more something else yeah i'm i'm six months on the job and i work closely with the the tcc team but i i wish i could speak more to it but tcc is a really awesome program it's a deep engagement um they don't get as much continuous funding as we get so it's been on and off but it is something that for especially advocacy organizations um local community-based advocacy organizations can really work together and they partner with usually the city um and then is really about visioning your community and identifying what's missing what you need what else or what needs to be added or removed and is really um a deep vision i like to think of like ahc is like build the thing here and tcc is on the other end of the how do we make sure that the community's voices are empowered and heard and they're a great team and that will be launching the NOFA for that comes out in about two or three months i think the NOFA's out okay yeah so yeah i think it was like the last couple weeks so yeah but um yeah but yeah and i can happily connect you know reach out to me or come back to me afterwards and i can give you the contact information and similar to what carl said there's actually technical assistance for people to apply um ahc has that as well but usually for cities but yeah tcc is a really great program if you have a community-based led organization ready to see change right we got time for more it's 325 otherwise we can let you get on and and go have a snack or get ready for your next session anybody guys have a last question yep hold on hold on for the people online okay yeah it's a good question i don't know we're gonna talk with the cow bike folks and we're gonna try and get this presentation on the website and uh otherwise if you signed up we'll we'll make sure we find it we'll get it distributed out that way or email any of us directly yeah or give us an email thank you all thank you