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SLO Offers Neighborhood Grants

By Camas Frank ~

The City of San Luis Obispo has just kicked off a program designed to give a little of their recently passed budget directly back to residents.

The Neighborhood Matching Grant program is now open for the 2015-16 cycle, taking applications from neighbors who want to do some do-it-yourself improvement projects for community enjoyment.

Grant requests ideally work like this:
• Citizens identify a project that improves the quality of life for everyone around them.
• They do a wit-round and get their neighbors to agree and or volunteer time, money or materials to make it happen.
• Then they spend time quantifying those pledged contributions, doing paperwork writing up a specific proposal for City Staff.

The projects can be pretty simple, maybe some painting for instance. If all the residents need is some paint and some throw clothes, that should ring in between the $250 and $5,000 range the City is willing to match.

By the way, for the purposes of the matching grant calculations one volunteer hour is worth approximately $23.

If a civic minded block manager can manage to Tom Sawyer 10 friends into a tree planting for a few hours that’s even more likely to meet the City’s review criteria of project sustainability and general benefit.

Don’t get too ambitious with thoughts of what that $5,000-Holy Grail grant might be able to accomplish though. The City budget for the 2-year pilot program is only a total of $15,000. They’ve got to make that last too.

The first $5,000 will be dispersed this year and another $10,000 next year. Depending on the applications submitted it’s far more likely for several small but well thought out projects to be spread through the City than for one dream project to get the OK.

Rebecca Gershow, an associate planner with the City who did footwork to get the grant program going and is overseeing implementation, said that it’s vitally important to get draft applications into the department by Oct. 23.

There’s an informational meeting on Oct. 1, inside the Community Development Department office – in the corner under the Palm Street Parking Garage, 919 Palm St., but, she said, staff will help flush out existing ideas as well as explain.

“We just got approval to go ahead from the City Council on Aug. 18,” she said. “I spent the summer researching possibilities. The City has a number of neighbor hood groups and homeowner associations we spoke with.”

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Justin Stoner

Justin is a journalist of more than 20 years. He specializes in digital technology and social media strategy. He enjoys using photography and video production as storytelling tools.

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