Click Here for Infill Guidelines

For the most part, none of our concerns were addressed, at least not the pertinent ones. There are still 3 main areas of concern that will greatly detriment our members’ projects looking to apply for this funding:

Access to transit point scoring, we argued for a more liberal definition due to the fact that public transit in suburban or rural areas is not going to be as readily available or as frequent as highly urbanized areas. There were some minor changes made defining Major Transit Stop for localities with minimum densities of 15 units or less. It allows for 1 route departing 6 or more times during commute hours or 2 routes departing 8 or more times during commute hours to qualify. I’m not too sure if this will help our members’ rural and suburban projects qualify or not.

Geographic distribution of funds, We argued for a 10% rural set aside within each region. There were some changes made. 1) Instead of awarding not less than. they use target a % of funds, 2) a target of 10% to projects in the Central Valley, it is actually a target to seven counties in the San Joaquin Valley. The other counties throughout the Central Valley as well as those not specifically mentioned in previous drafts will have to compete for a target of 45% of total funds that will go to Northern California (meaning most everyone will have to compete against projects coming out of San Francisco and Sacramento).

Consistency to Regional Plans, We were requesting that applicants from regions that have just recently gained access to blueprint regional money be exempt from this requirement and receive the maximum points. Many of these regions have just begun the blueprint process and have yet to develop or adopt such regional plans.

Some projects will begin the app process with a 30 point disadvantage just by not meeting the access to transit and consistency to regional plans requirements.

Also there is mention of The Rural Area Determination Procedures (referenced on Page 5) when determining whether a project is within a rural area but they aren’t posted anywhere. I contacted HCD and they will be posted within a week, possibly sooner. Apparently the criteria checklist is located in statute.