Preparedness/CalFire2018Grants

CalFire 2018 Grants for FY 2019

There are funds available from CalFire for community fire prevention.

http://calfire.ca.gov/fire_prevention/firepreventiongrants

The application's due date is December 19th. Through a series of steps the grants are awarded Sept 2019. The grants must be completed by March 15, 2022. One can make annual requests and stagger the work/re-embursement over the span of a few years.

Among the eligible grantees are water districts, such as the Butano Water Company

The types of things which can be done are

• Hazardous Fuel Reduction
• Fire Prevention Education
• Fire Prevention Planning

see the above link for details and examples

The general model is incremental payment with proof of milestone, but non profits can request advance payments.

There is a related grant called the Forest Health Grant http://www.fire.ca.gov/resource_mgt/resource_mgt_foresthealth_grants

Exploring activities within the Water Company's remit

Yes, by section

• Hazardous Fuel Reduction
  • Vegetation clearance in critical locations - on BWC owned lots, or with permissions
  • removal of ladder fuels - on BWC owned lots, or with permission
  • Selective Tree Removal
  • Modification of vegitation adjacent to roads
  • reduction of fuel loading around hydrants, staging areas, and water drafting
  • purchase of fuel removal equipment.
  • remove of DEAD and DYING trees ( under various restrictions)
  • green waste bin days, chipping days

• Fire Prevention Education
  • workshops, meetings, collaterial & educational activities. ( this could cover some of the printing costs we've been picking up on our own)

• Fire Prevention Planning
  • Mapping; for example duplicating Ari's gear to accelerate the CalFire Canyon Mapping
  • Creation of Community Wildfire Protection Plan ( probably a good idea )
  • Development of Evacuation Plans ( back to Mapping )
  • Development of the various Logging / Thinning plans
    • paying foresters for their expertise, for example.

Just No from CalFire

 Purchase of capital equipment greater than $100,000.
 Installation, creation, upgrade, or maintenance of fire protection features, such as roads, bridges, structure’s or water storage facilities.
 Any project submitted by a for profit company or corporation.
 Projects or activities with indirect costs greater than 12%.
 Projects or activities utilizing CAL FIRE staff without corresponding reimbursements or requests seeking funding for services already provided by CAL FIRE.
 Removal of dead and dying trees that do not pose a threat to public health and safety.

Options?

• remember, we're still allowed to sell timber as part of the fuel reduction projects.
• apply for cleanup funds for areas around hydrants and an identified 'water draw' ( creek areas )
• apply for cleanup funds for BWC owned lots, to served as 'educational example' as well.
• Apply for development of Evac Plans, or Community Wildfire Protection Plans
• Equipment? chain saws, loppers, etc. Some stashed for emergency use?
• Mapping - our own gear so we can back-fill the CalFire / Ari mapping project w/out having to co-ordinate with SSEO

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Proposal Elements

Starting the sub-pages here, as a check list and place to distribut writing tasks.

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Progress Log ( most recent first )

Rough Daily Progress and ToDo log

formal punt Dec 20

• Just too many blockers to get in this years process
  • we're not the right kind of non profit
  • another round with SMCRCD made it clear that we were stymied due to late participation - no sponsorship there.
  • not enough time to get our own Fire Protection District / Fire Safe Council formed
• Casey attends SMCRCD board meeting hoping to establish contacts with indicated SMRCD 'Fire Grant' people.

drilling Dec 13

• Third Party Contacts
  • more email with SMCRCD
    • casey to go to board meeting Dec20th.
  • email with Costside Emergency Corps
  •  ? Ari the FireGuy wants to talk. oops.
  • CalFire Felton crew: think about next year, partner with CalFireSanMateo, most likely don't worry about a chipper expansion program needing special permits, yes do a community fire plan. no you cannot continue adding to a proposal after its submitted ( for example to add/correct the Sponsorship problem ) Yes after approval you can move budget and expense figures around this is a natural occurrence. ( note: really nice folks )
• working on sub-pages
  • the entire template for the Statement of Work is now in the Elements area. fleshing segments out. ( not happy with the editing format on this, may have to push down one more level. wikimedia artifacts in navigation are starting to show up )

connections Dec 12

• Third Party Contacts
  • phone tag with Cal Fire's Felton crew
  • word from SMRCD Kellyx will put me in contact with their fire grants person. Hopefully in the next day or so. Their org administers Fire Safe San Mateo County, which is one of the official Fire Safety non profit organizations ( this is a real thing folks ) serving as an umbrella organization for a number of SMCounty groups. https://firesafesanmateo.org/about/members. Unfortunately they have about 7 of these in the works at the moment, all due next week.
  • CalFire Felton crew: 1) the Canyon actually is an "At Risk" community but the Santa Cruz fire chief hasn't signed the paperwork to make it official. 2) A bit of a misunderstanding, they spell out how an approved proposal can be changed. I had asked if an incomplete proposal can be changed during the evaluation period. Asking for clarification. 3) does our Green Bin program have to have a forestry person / plan in place once they start giving us some $. Going back around on this.
  • Coastside Emergency Corps doesn't know what Casey is talking about. quick intro, then they will look into this.
• Ethan provides backgrounder and documents pertaining to CEQA as fits our road rebuild He has some local professionals who helped with that project who we could re-use when we have to write our own. Also walks through Casey's scenario for estimating costs for bi-monthly green bin / chipping. Ethan mentions 'block wide exemption for CEQA' from someone, details lost in passing but some CalFire guy.
• Catherine comes through with a budget I can reverse engineer into costs for proposal
• still building sub pages for proposal
  • re-review of the application form. it's not so daunting now.
  • building sub pages for Statement of work collaboration.

FRAPilicious Peril Dec 11

• much writing in the 'components' area
• Third Party Contacts
  • CalFire: clarification on terms - Tier 2 high hazard zones described http://frap.fire.ca.gov/projects/projects_drought ( not us, som small patches up in the South Fork of the creek ) and High Hazard Severity Zones described http://www.fire.ca.gov/fire_prevention/fire_prevention_wildland_zones Note the second link confirms we are in a High Hazard zone, with Very High hazard zones up in Butano state park and up above Memorial Park (?) Loma Mar
  • New Casey found and wrote to the two Cal Fire Grant people over in Felton. No response yet.
  • New Casey found and wrote to Fire Safe San Mateo County' as a possible sponsor
  • no word from the SMRCD yet ( 4pm )
  • New Casey contacts Coastside Emergency Corp for background on lack of 'Community At Risk' designations west of Skyline.

( to be titled ) Dec 10

• create sub-pages for application items in wiki in progress
• Contact Butanoids
  • Ethan turns into Don, provides Green numbers for Memorial Day and Labor Day. Discussion about how to extrapolate those into bi-monthly figures
  • Catherine has a slew of documents, points out some of the Policy documents aren't yet in place.
  • Ross provides another document, incorporation from the state
  • noting from Rob & Ken on equipment #s
  • New Requests Ethan for evidence of BCMWC working with CEQA/NEPA documentation requirements, also any verbiage describing Water Plant upgrade. This informatino will be used in the Propsal in the sections requiring evidence that the BCMWC is capable of completing complex projects.
• Third Party Contacts
  • no response @ noon
  • New Requests CalFire for clarification of terms High Fire Risk and Tier Two High Hazard - this has to do with getting an exception for CEQA

Divide and Conquer Dec 9

• re-review Cal Fire 'Fire Prevention Grant Program Procedural Guide 2018-2019'
  • create sub-pages for application items in wiki in progress
• contact Butanoids wrt deliverables / elements
  • Catherine - stamped memo of approval ( get exact wording ) from board granting Casey the lead role for the purposes of this grant in progress
  • Ethan - get costs of rental of boxes. in progress
  • Rob and Ken - get estimates for Chipper purchase in progress
• ack, build Mantis structure for this, just as a to do list
• Investigate "at risk communities" designation for Pescadero / Butano Canyon ( see Factoids, below )

• Third Party Contacts
• Communication between Casey & Rob re Rich Sampson (CalFire) & endorsement. Casey had attached maps to email, not sure if Rob got them.
• Casey writes Kellyx @ SMRCD re working iwth us if the water company is strictly ineligible.

Board meeting Dec 8

Butano Water Company Board approves the idea. Generous offers of help.

Casey: I'm not quite sure where to focus proposal. Frankly there is a lot of things we could ask for but are not prepared to ask for, given our time frame. The trick is that we're constrained to Fire issues - road, buildings, bollards, fire hydrant fittings and other infrastructure improvements are not allowed. (AFAIK, will review.) Also need to review the actual 'structure of the organization to receive grants' bits. The Procedural Guide is pretty clear that we need to be of a subset of organization types, or to be allied with an organization type.

High Priority Items

1. improve access via road system
   1. clearing fuel areas around hydrants, and water draws
2. "Plan" - a Neighborhood Forestry Plan ( <- general phrase ) leads to a lot of possibilities for granting. however we don't have one.
   1. Casey is pretty sure that we don't have time to get the bids from Forestry People to put into a proposal

groveling over data in CalFire website Dec 5-8

Casey identifies items to present to the BCMWC Board.

Bootstrapping ID Dec 5

A few days later another email arrived with a NIFC ID and temporary password. This ID is used to do the grant work flow. Part of what has to happen is to define the geographic area the Proposal will address.

http://www.arcgis.com/home/index.html

ID	password	security question answer
casey.dunn_nifc	butan04yn0n	Cooper

http://www.arcgis.com/home/index.html

When this account was created an invitation was extended to a group called 'Fire Prevention Grants FY18-19.' The accompanying letter asked for a survey to be completed, and for a bit of GIS mapping to be done. The survey is simply contact information. The mapping involves using ARCGIS ( Casey's used this before ) to mark the general region ( Butano Canyon ) and then specific spots. Of course CalFire understands that some grants won't have 'specific work areas.'

ID request Dec 1

Casey applied for a 2018 Fire Prevention grant application project number on the first-day-he-knew-about-it and the last-day-one-could-apply-for-the-darn-thing. That would be November 20, 2018.

The request was made on behalf o the the Water Company, which is a 503(c). Is it a 'water district' as well?

That request was granted Dec 3, 2018 around 8 in the morning! amazing.

ID	Who	what
18-FP-CSU-1140	Butano Water Company	Butano Canyon Fire Prevention Project

CalFire Reference Material ( please add )

Are on a separate page

Proposal Factoid Gathering

Gathering notes here, will move to separate page somewhere along the way

• according to CalFire Maps we are not in a Very High Fire risk area. We are in a High Risk zone. This means we may be suitable for exemption from California Environmental Quality Act ( CEQA ) due to a 2015 Proclamation of a State of Emergency. There are a few ( 4 ) requirements, and we would have to meet the practices documented in http://www.fire.ca.gov/treetaskforce/downloads/Draft_Tree_Removal_Guidelines_3-1-16.pdf
  • related BUDGET ITEMS: Fees for Department of Fish and Wildlife filing fees. Advised to put requests for funds into the proposal budget. LOOK UP WHAT $$$ IS INVOLVED
• Are we in a Community At Risk http://osfm.fire.ca.gov/fireplan/fireplanning_communities_at_risk From first glance it appears that we are not - none of the communities on the Coast Side are listed. Perhaps they are not communities? There is a form to change this: http://osfm.fire.ca.gov/fireplan/fireplanning_communities_at_risk_Status Bring this UP? Insurance impact?
  • update 12/12/2018 - we are in RiskLimbo! the community as been assessed as being at Risk ( officially ) but the paperwork is stalled out somewhere in CalFire Santa Cruz.
• Are we a Disadvantaged / Low Income community ( census tract # 6081613800 ) https://www.arb.ca.gov/cc/capandtrade/auctionproceeds/communityinvestments.htm Disadvanged:No Low Income Yes ( AB1550 )