City of Sacramento
City Council - 5PM Report
915 I Street Sacramento, CA 95814
www.cityofsacramento.org
File ID: 2023-00392 4/18/2023 Consent Item 9.
2023 Clean California Local Grant Program Applications
File ID: 2023-00392
Location: District 2, Represented by Councilmember Loloee, and District 3, Represented by Councilmember Talamantes
Recommendation: Adopt a Resolution 1) authorizing the City Manager or the City Manager’s designee to submit the following projects to the Clean California Local Grant Program: a) Northgate Boulevard Community Beautification Project; and b) Dixieanne Neighborhood Clean & Green Alleys
2.0; 2) authorizing the City Manager or the City Manager’s designee to submit any related documents necessary to support the grant applications; and 3) authorizing the City Manager or the City Manager’s designee to execute the grant agreements and any related grant documents upon award by the California Department of Transportation.
Contact: Rachel Patten, Sustainability Analyst, (916) 808-5016, [email protected], Department of Public Works; Lucinda Willcox, Assistant Director, (916) 808-5052, [email protected], Department of Public Works; Fedolia ‘Sparky’ Harris, Principal Planner (916) 808-2996, [email protected], Department of Public Works; Megan Van Voorhis, Director, (916) 808-5979, [email protected], Department of Convention & Cultural Services
Presenter: None.
Attachments:
1-Description/Analysis
2-Resolution
Additional Description/Analysis
Issue Detail: Clean California is a State grant program that includes funding for a variety of actions to reduce waste in the public right of way. Caltrans has issued a call for projects for the competitive Clean California Local Grants Program. The Clean California Local Grant Program has the following goals:
File ID: 2023-00392 4/18/2023 Consent Item 9.
· Reduce the amount of waste and debris within public rights-of-way, pathways, parks, transit centers, and other public spaces.
· Enhance, rehabilitate, restore, or install measures to beautify and improve public spaces and mitigate the urban heat island effect.
· Enhance public health, cultural connection, and community placemaking by improving public spaces for walking and recreation.
· Advance equity for underserved communities.
Grant applications are due April 28, 2023. The maximum grant request per project is $5 million. The grant requires 0% to 50% local match, depending on the demographics of the population in a ½ mile radius of the project site.
As the grant covers many separate policy goals, City staff from several departments evaluated potential projects and selected those that best meet the goals and purpose of this grant program and where local match funding can be identified. A significant factor is the requirement for the project to be completed and open to the public no later than June 30, 2026, which eliminates the time required to incorporate any soil remediation or pursuit of permits or encroachment permits. The local grant therefore focuses on areas outside freeway rights-of-way and underpasses. In addition, the grant criteria focus on projects that serve disadvantaged communities, with the requirements for local match based on the severity of disadvantage in the surrounding area. In this round, the grant guidelines updated the required census information and also expanded the population radius to be considered from ¼ mile in the last round to ½ mile in this round, which resulted in greater local match requirements for several potential grant projects. Staff did not recommend pursuing grant applications for projects that required more matching funds than could be identified in available local funding programs.
Based upon the stated goals of the grant programs, community benefit, and availability of any required local match funds, staff recommends submittal of the following two projects for funding, in order of priority: 1) Northgate Boulevard Community Beautification Project and 2) Dixieanne Neighborhood Clean & Green Alleys 2.0.
Policy Considerations: These projects are consistent with a variety of City policies to support active transportation, litter abatement, and improvements to public facilities, including the following policies listed below:
M 1.3.4 Barrier Removal for Accessibility - The City shall remove barriers, where feasible, to allow people of all abilities to move freely and efficiently throughout the city.
M 5.1.9 Conversion of Underused Facilities - The City shall convert underused rights-of-way, including drainage canals, freeway easements, railroad corridors, and underutilized travel and
File ID: 2023-00392 4/18/2023 Consent Item 9.
parking lanes to bicycle and/or pedestrian facilities where possible and appropriate.
PHS 5.1.9 Healthy Communities - The City shall encourage the planning of new communities and revitalization of existing urban areas to achieve improvements in overall public health by encouraging a healthier living environment that includes walkable neighborhoods, access to recreation and open space, healthy foods, medical services, and public transit.
Creative Edge Cultural Plan 5.1 - The City of Sacramento’s Creative Edge cultural plan calls for celebrating and infusing all Sacramento neighborhoods and districts with arts and culture. It calls for supporting and expanding neighborhood-based programming and creative placemaking through community- and artist-initiated projects as well as artist-designed neighborhood markers.
Economic Impacts: None.
Environmental Considerations:
California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA): Under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) guidelines, continuing administrative activities such as grant applications do not constitute a project and are therefore exempt from review. Any projects awarded grant funding will undergo necessary environmental review.
Sustainability: This grant is intended to reduce waste and debris in public spaces and to support actions to promote greening and mitigate the urban heat island effect.
Commission/Committee Action: Not applicable.
Rationale for Recommendation: The projects identified in this report meet the objectives of the Clean California Local Grant Program. Award of grant funds will provide funding for investments to support clean, green, and active unique public spaces to serve communities most in need.
The two projects both have substantial merit and serve neighborhoods in need of investments. The program required prioritization, and the rationale for prioritization was as follows:
1. Northgate Boulevard Community Beautification Project - this project will address litter, walkability, and support continued investment and activation of this corridor, which serves as the main street for the neighborhood. The community has completed and is invested in a number of efforts to improve this very long corridor.
2. Dixieanne Clean & Green Alleys 2.0 - this project will build on the efforts of the first Clean California grant to address an ongoing issue with illegal dumping and opportunities for additional active public spaces to serve the community. Since the first phase of the project received funding in the last round of this grant, the Northgate project was given top priority as it has not yet received funding under this grant program.
File ID: 2023-00392 4/18/2023 Consent Item 9.
Financial Considerations: A total of $100 million in grant funding for the local grant portion of the Clean California Grant Program is available statewide with a cap of $5 million in grant funds per application. The grant’s funding requirements require between 0% and 50% in local match requirements, depending on the severity of disadvantage for the grant program as determined by Caltrans formula.
The specific source of local funds will be allocated to projects after determining which projects are awarded grants. Depending on which project is awarded, sources may include local transportation funds, staff time contributions, and other funding sources. Staff has examined potential local match requirements for each project and identified potential matching funds if grant funding is awarded.
Staff will return to the City Council to establish Capital Improvement Projects and for any necessary budget adjustments and other actions if and when specific grants are awarded.
Local Business Enterprise (LBE): Not applicable.
Background: Staff reviewed the Clean California Local Grant Program Guidelines and found analyzed projects against the grant requirements and the following selection criteria:
§ Demonstrated need of the applicant and ability to achieve the program’s goals. § Demonstrated enhancement and beautification of a public space(s), including improved access to the space.
§ Enhanced greening to provide shade, reduce the urban heat island effect, and use native, drought-tolerant plants.
§ Abatement of litter and debris to improve access and use of public space(s). § Public engagement that reflects community priorities and is consistent with local or regional plans such as General Plans, Improvement Plans, bicycle and/or pedestrian plans, and complete street plans. The project should also align with the public outreach that occurred during the preparation of these plans.
§ Identification of the population benefit, including to underserved communities. Projects that demonstrate a benefit to an underserved community, either directly or indirectly, will be more competitive. For these projects, applicants must explain which underserved community is benefited, how the project benefits that community, and the percentage of the work and budget that benefits that community.
§ Project deliverability, in which projects are open to the public and/or all funds are expended by June 30, 2026.
Full detail on the program is available on the website at:
<https://cleancalifornia.dot.ca.gov/local-grants/local-grant-program> This cycle, the grant program has $100 million available statewide, only one-third of the amount from
File ID: 2023-00392 4/18/2023 Consent Item 9.
the previous round. This is Cycle 2 of this state grant program; in Cycle 1 of the Clean CA grant program City staff submitted six applications and received funding for five projects totaling nearly $16 million.
The following summarizes the projects proposed for application. Note, the projects are required to be prioritized and are listed in recommended priority.
Northgate Boulevard Community Beautification Project ( District 3): The Northgate Boulevard Community Beautification Project is a combination public outreach campaign and beautification effort.
Its goals are 1) to continue to establish community identity and brand along the central corridor that is Northgate Boulevard, 2) contribute to traffic calming along the boulevard, 3) increase pedestrian safety, particularly for youth to and from school, 4) clean up litter along Northgate Boulevard (and near schools) and reduce litter and dumping moving forward, and 5) promote community and creative activation along the boulevard.
The community beautification project would focus on Northgate Boulevard from the Garden Highway north toward I-80. The project will include placemaking efforts such as box wraps, murals, and creative crosswalks. The project would include litter abatement efforts such as community clean-ups and youth outreach conducted with local non-profit partners. Finally, the project will invest in infrastructure to support placemaking at various locations along the corridor.
Dixieanne Neighborhood Clean & Green Alleys 2.0 (District 2): This project would build on the previously awarded and active Dixieanne Alleys project by transforming additional alleys into usable public spaces through the removal of illegal dumping and abandoned vehicles, the installation of permeable interlocking concrete pavers, and other alley activation measures. Greening would include replacing unimproved dirt and gravel alleys with engineered permeable pavers to control stormwater runoff and create an attractive surface to encourage outdoor recreation. Opportunities would be identified to install art in public places. Where feasible, the City will promote planting of trees on adjacent private properties to support greening of the alley corridors.
The Recycling & Solid Waste Division as well as Code Enforcement Division would be key partners in this project. Ongoing efforts to abate littering and illegal dumping in the Dixieanne Alleys is challenging due to a persistent pattern that has plagued this neighborhood for years; the Dixieanne Alleys are known in the community as a place where you can get away with dumping. By improving the alleys, activating the corridors, instituting a public outreach campaign, and implementing appropriate countermeasures, the project aims to reverse this perception and related negative activities.
Finally, staff intended to resubmit the 24th Street Bypass Joint Park/Detention Basin Project that was submitted to the Clean California program last year but not awarded in the last round. This proposed $5 million project would provide for development of a joint park/detention basin on a vacant city- owned property as well as park improvements to the existing park across 24 th Street. Based on updated census data and the ½ mile population radius requirements, the City would be required to
File ID: 2023-00392 4/18/2023 Consent Item 9.
provide a local match of 37.5%, totaling approximately $1.85 million. Unfortunately, the participating departments are not able to identify that level of local match in available funding programs so City staff does not recommend moving forward with a grant application for this project for this cycle. Staff will continue to explore funding opportunities for this project.
RESOLUTION NO.
Adopted by the Sacramento City Council
2023 Clean California Local Grant Program Applications
BACKGROUND
A. The California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) has announced a call for projects for Round 2 of the Clean California Local Grant Program. Applications are due April 28, 2023.
B. The Clean California Local Grant Program has the following goals:
Reduce the amount of waste and debris within public rights-of-way, pathways, parks, transit centers, and other public spaces.
Enhance, rehabilitate, restore, or install measures to beautify and improve public spaces and mitigate the urban heat island effect. Enhance public health, cultural connection, and community placemaking by improving public spaces for walking and recreation.
Advance equity for underserved communities.
C. The Clean California Local Grant Program will provide approximately $100 million statewide in Round 2.
D. Staff has reviewed the guidelines, criteria, and requirements for the grant, consulted with various stakeholders, and prepared a recommended list of projects that meet the criteria for the program.
BASED ON THE FACTS SET FORTH IN THE BACKGROUND, THE CITY COUNCIL RESOLVES AS FOLLOWS:
Section 1. The City Manager or the City Manager’s designee is authorized to submit applications for Clean California Local Grant Program for the following projects, as prioritized below:
1. Northgate Boulevard Community Beautification Project
2. Dixieanne Clean & Green Alleys 2.0
Section 2. The City Manager or the City Manager’s designee is authorized to submit any and all related documents necessary to support grant applications.
Section 3. The City Manager or the City Manager’s designee is authorized to execute grant agreements and any related grant documents upon award by Caltrans.