The Surface Transportation Block Grant Program is a federal program that provides states and local jurisdictions with funding for highway improvements, street rehabilitation and transportation enhancements. The Transportation Agency receives an annual apportionment of funding, passed through the State. Because Monterey County didn’t have an urbanized area with a population of greater than 200,000 in the 1990 census, it qualified for the state exchange program, whereby Caltrans keeps the federal Surface Transportation Block Grant Program apportionments for a region and gives the regional agency an equivalent amount of state cash.
The Transportation Agency distributes the funding in both fair-share and competitive programs, after setting aside 10% for a TAMC Reserve to fund programs such as the Regional Traffic Counts and the Safe Streets Pilot Program. Monterey County and the cities receive fair-share funds based on a formula of 50% population and 50% centerline miles. The total fair share allocation over the prior three year cycle was $3.6 million.
The Transportation Agency distributes the remaining portion of the funding on a competitive basis to transportation projects based on a variety of criteria, including safety, traffic volume, project readiness, and the jurisdiction's utilization of grant and fair-share funding. Project proposals are scored out of a total 100 possible points, with the jurisdiction fully programming their fair-share funds and past performance on delivering competitive grant projects constituting 20 of those points.
Additionally, California State Assembly Bill 1012 (AB102) requires that Surface Transportation Block Grant Program funds are subject to a “timely use of funds” provision. Assembly Bill 102 requires that once funds are obligated towards a project then the jurisdiction has up to three years to use the funds or lose them. The TAMC Board also has implemented a timely “Use of Funds Provision” that is similar to AB1012. The TAMC Timely Use of Funds policy stipulates that funds will be de-programmed from a local agency if project implementation is not moving forward in a satisfactory manner and reapplied towards a project that is ready for implementation. This process of fund redistribution requires the approval of the TAMC Board of Directors and will occur at the award of the next competitive grant cycle in August 2023.
Attached with this report is a listing of each jurisdiction with outstanding balances of Surface Transportation Block Grant Program funding. In addition to having projects with balances of funding remaining, several jurisdictions have unprogrammed balances of fair-share funding that is eligible to program to projects. Agency staff requests that each jurisdiction review the listing of balances and notifies staff of any incorrectly reported amounts or projects that have been completed with balances remaining, and submit requests to program available fair-share funding.