To: Board of County Commissioners
Through: Gini Pingenot, Director, Open Spaces
Prepared By:
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Sandy Bottoms, Grants and Acquisitions Administrator, Open Spaces
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presenter
Presenter: Sandy Bottoms, Grants and Acquisitions Administrator, Open Spaces
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Subject:
title
1:00 PM *2027 Open Space Grant Cycle Funding
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Purpose and Request:
recommended action
Staff will present recommendations for the 2027 Open Space Grants cycle and request approval by the Board of County Commissioners (BOCC) for the funding allocation.
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Alignment with Strategic Plan: Good Governance - Understand and respond to community needs, interests, and values.
Background and Discussion: Since 2005, the Open Space grants program has awarded more than $73 million to agencies across the County for park, trail, and open space projects. Those partners leveraged the County funds with $103 million in matching contributions.
Grant categories, funding caps, and application criteria have evolved over time to encourage competitive, high-quality projects and to meet the needs of our partner agencies. Open Spaces staff uses feedback from grantees and recent grant cycle trends to make recommendations for upcoming grant cycles.
Open Spaces staff recommends keeping the total allocation for 2027 grants at $5.5 million and keeping the maximum award amount for small and planning grants at $150,000. However, based on recent grantee comments, the fact that most standard grant recipients in the last few years have requested the maximum amount, inflation, and increasing construction costs, we recommend raising the standard grant maximum from $600,000 to $750,000. This increase is expected to help grantees who continually face higher project costs, and it may reduce the need for some of them to phase certain projects. The maximum grant amounts were last increased in 2023.
Staff would allocate the $5.5 million in total funding for three grant categories:
$4,000,000 for S...
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