Institute for Local Government and California Strategic Growth Council Announce Second Round of BOOST Program to Help Under-Resourced Communities Address Climate Change |
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Today, the California Strategic Growth Council (SGC) and Institute for Local Government announced the next cohort of the BOOST Program, a state-wide program tailored to help California cities and towns advance their climate action, resilience, and equity objectives. The program is administered through a partnership between SGC, ILG, Climate Resolve, California Coalition for Rural Housing, and Farallon Strategies.
This technical assistance program supports under-resourced cities with building capacity, optimizing existing resources, strengthening community partnerships, and transforming their approach to address and fund climate activities. Through BOOST, SGC, ILG and the project team are partnering with seven cities to provide tailored support on advancing climate action through Spring 2023. The jurisdictions vary in size, geography and demographics and were selected based on their status as low-income or disadvantaged communities, limited local government staff capacity, and demonstrated desire to work on climate-related issues. The communities include the cities of Barstow, La Puente, Maywood, McFarland, Needles, Rialto, and South San Francisco.
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Congratulations to the BOOST Participants! |
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BOOST PILOT PROGRAM SUCCESSES
The 2021 BOOST Program is based on the BOOST Pilot Program which helped 10 cities and two regions build capacity to advance their climate and equity goals. The 18-month pilot was designed to provide flexible and responsive technical assistance to address the varying and evolving capacity challenges of local governments, while also sharing best practices and lessons learned to help inform state programs. Successes from the Pilot Program include:
- Connecting BOOST partners to over 50 grant opportunities;
- Providing direct application assistance on over 20 grants, leading to over $50 million in new funding;
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Facilitating discussions between local agency partners, state agency staff and technical assistance providers working on 12 grant programs from 5 different state agencies;
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Providing strategic counsel, allocated funding, secured resources and/or identified expert consultants to help develop 6 Climate Action and/or Resiliency Plans, including the first-ever for the cities of Paramount, Ventura, Bakersfield and Salinas and updates for San Diego and East Palo Alto;
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Training 72 local agency staff on authentic public engagement strategies through numerous customized capacity-building workshops;
- Strengthening local planning projects by facilitating discussions and building relationships with community-based organizations and advocates that provided valuable input to support more equitable planning to address the needs of vulnerable populations; and
- Increasing awareness of best practices and effective strategies for more inclusive and authentic public engagement, including the pivot to virtual public engagement.
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About the BOOST Team
The program is administered through a partnership between SGC, ILG, Climate Resolve, California Coalition for Rural Housing, and Farallon Strategies.
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