Page 15 - Sonoma County Gazette July 2018

OUR COUNTY cont’d from page 14
Funding for Road Projects
Unrelated to this year’s budget, but discussed midway through the hearings, my colleagues gave me approval to work with Regional Parks, the Department of Transportation and Public Works and county counsel to unlock roughly $4.5 million of quarry mitigation funds set aside for transportation infrastructure improvements in Forestville. Currently, these funds are linked to specific projects, including intersection improvements at Highway 116 and Mirabel, Covey, River, and Mirabel Roads.
That’s the key: currently, these high dollar (I’m talking tens of millions) projects aren’t going to be completed unless we find a magical suitcase of money on the sidewalk. My hope is that we can fund smaller projects first— directing these funds toward projects that have been identified as priorities by the Forestville community, including bike and pedestrian improvements and new crosswalks in downtown.
I’m also pleased to report we were able to continue our
community improvement programs grants this year with tax money generated by tourism. In West County, the Board of Supervisors allocated a little more than $345,000 — roughly 20 percent—of the available funding to West County chambers of commerce, visitor centers, community nonprofits and events. In addition, we allocated more than $2.6 million to Regional Parks for operations and maintenance of existing facilities. Regional Parks also received an additional $1 million from Measure L funding toward support of new facilities and parks. $1 million of Measure L funds were also given to fire and emergency services and another $1 million to the Department of Transportation and Public Works for roads repair and improvements.
Under a new tourism impact program, we were able to direct significant dollars to several West County fire districts for critical equipment and training needs, and also fund pedestrian improvement projects in Occidental and Sebastopol. Many communities who are directly impacted by tourism have
long felt that those dollars have not been coming back to them from the county. While most counties in the state and most of our local cities put these tax dollars into their general fund, we are excited to put some of this money directly back into the local communities that generate the tourist dollars.
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