Update July 2024: Our PWC member, Katherine Gregor, who has experience in grant writing, wrote a grant pre-application to the California State Coastal Conservancy (SCC) on behalf of the City. At the time, the City was losing Christopher Bolt who was in charge of Public Works & Utilities at the time, then transitioning to Gina Benedetti as interim director. After months of waiting for the pre-application to be submitted, our PWC team submitted the pre-application directly, with Gina’s support.The SCC had $2 Billion dollars for projects in these past few years, but just recently funds were frozen due to State of California budget cuts. We were informed that there was no money at this time for our project by Virgilio Cuasay, SCC Project Manager, San Francisco Bay Area Program. He offered to hold a conference call to review our pre-application and fund status.
On Monday, July 8th the PWC Time to Trestle team met at the new City’s Public Works office to hold that Zoom meeting with Virgilio. Here are important items from that conversation.
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SCC has no money now, but bonds may be voted for in November and available in January 2025.
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The Trestle is technically in the queue for funds.
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However, the SCCs priorities now are Climate Change and Sea Level Rise.
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It helps to have the Trestle be a part of the river pathway
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SCC has contributed $1.4 M to the Petaluma River Park
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and $485k to the Friends of the Petaluma River Greenway Project (spur north from Lynch Creek trail.)
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It would help to add to the application if applicable
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stabilizing and resilience for flood control
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urban greening
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It is a roadblock when the City and SMART have not transferred Trestle ownership to the City. An agreement needs to be in place before money would be granted.
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Virgilio would accept and review a full application now, helping us to hone a good application for funds when available.
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I don’t believe that the SCC staff in place now knew the history of their involvement with the Trestle project.
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The 2012 funding of the shovel ready plans
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The 2020 request from the SCC to apply for grant funding as a three pronged effort with River Park and the Greenway.
The City informed us that they have hired Senior CIP Engineer, Steven Worrell to our project, and with the newly allocated to the Trestle budget $675k, they have hired the design consultant firm of Foth. The design phase will take approximately a year and include a robust public outreach component to seek community feedback and inform the design. Foth also will work towards finding grant money. The City did not have a project schedule available to share with us.
On Thursday, July 18th, the SCC had a contingent visit the Friend’s Greenway project and the River Park. They then headed to the Floathouse for a river centric tour on kayaks. Our Mayor, Kevin McDonnell, met them at the Trestle to thank the SCC for all the support they have given to Petaluma activities, but to also show our City’s support for the Trestle Rehabilitation project.