All right. There we go. All right. I think everyone can see my screen. I have the presentation pulled up. We'll go ahead and get started now. Hi everyone. I'm Colin Willard. I'm a member of the Grand Assistance Program. Got a couple colleagues here on the call. Chases off camera. On our IPA events tab, we've got Matt Harris on the call as well. I think Lori is listening in the background. I assume with Matt, we usually just start these off by giving just a brief introduction. So we assist local governments with grant opportunities, finding technical writing grants, pretty wide range of services. But today we're actually going to be introducing everyone to another set of technical assistance providers here for specific programs through Denrec. This is an interesting one for us because it means that because we have Squa and Crystal here who are able to offer some technical assistance, basically provides an opportunity to work with them to accomplish some pretty awesome habitat restoration projects. We're going to hand it off to them to talk a little bit about the program that they offer and some of the different funding opportunities and projects that could be funded through this. Then we'll have plenty of time afterwards for questions if anyone on the call wants to ask anything specific or talk about any specific projects that they might have. With that, I'll go ahead and hand it over to the Denmark team and you guys can just tell me when I need to click and everything and we can get going. Hi, I'm actually going to go first. Kristen Thornton. If you want to advance to the next slide, I'm going to give you a brief on what we call our Resilient Community Partnership. Like the opening act here for Saquina and Crystal, the big stars of BIL. I'm an environmental scientist in our coastal management program. I administer the resilient community partnership. Hold on here, there we go. What do we mean by resilience? We mean the ability to bounce back or even ideally, to bounce forward after a significant storm or a flooding event, which unfortunately, we all know have been plaguing Delaware, particularly, I'd say, within the last three to five years. Next slide, over the last several years, the Coastal Program has leveraged federal funds from Noah to implement the Resilient Community Partnership, or RCP. As part of the partnership, the coastal management program provides direct staffing, technical support, public outreach, and training to support communities to be more resilient to coastal and climate hazards. One of the things that you might think that only pertains to what is considered the state coastal zone, the edge of Delaware. But in Noah's eyes, all of Delaware is actually considered coastal. We can use this funding across all of Delaware. Most importantly, it's really attractive, especially for some of these smaller towns, is that there's no match required for this funding. We've helped communities assess their vulnerabilities, prioritize potential adaptation and planning options, and implement their plans as we know, maybe not this year, but definitely in the past we've had nesters that have come through and really have not been very kind to us. We want to help these communities especially plan and prevent loss and recover from these impacts. Next slide. One of the things that we've been doing more recently have been vulnerability assessments. It's a really good first step for communities to achieve resilience. It basically determines your town or municipalities current vulnerabilities to natural hazards and how climate related issues may impact the community in the future. Following this inventory, identification of adaptation and implementation strategies can be developed what we have been. Seeing is that doing this foundational work has helped with folks when they are applying for grants, especially some of the federal grants offered through the BIL. Having this type of work is going to make you more competitive, even with brick grants. That is something that the RCP has done a few projects recently, like with Fenwick Island. We're completing a flooding study for Little Creek right now, and we've done other vulnerability assessments. Next slide, we've also assisted in funding the design of resilient infrastructure. What you're looking at right here is the upgraded berm system in Old Newcastle. The berm is going to protect the town and the roadway from flooding, but it also is designed as community amenity and recreational walking path. We can't fund the implementation, this type of work. That is where some of these other funding opportunities could come in handy. I'm sure we're all very familiar that there is money to be had. Incorporating this type of resilient design into planning efforts is only going to increase your resilience. Mayor Collier, I know is on the line. One of our current RCP projects actually is in the town of Milton, to design a shoreline protection for the Memorial Park, as well as the other side of the Broad Kill, where the fire department is. It's a combination of, I guess you could say, gray and green infrastructure. We're really looking forward to seeing what we can help them out with, maybe even in finding funding opportunities. Next slide, another RCP that we did, that's a little bit outside the box from planning or I guess say design work. We actually did a facilitation of a group with the City of Lewis, the IPA, actually we were the facilitators and basically facilitated the Lewis Executive Committee on resilience. And they worked on drafting a couple policies for the, I guess the town to consider on sea level rise disclosures and establishing a resilience fund. Next slide. With that, I'm going to hand it over to my wonderful colleagues who are going to tell you more about what we're all here for, which is how can we put these projects into action. Yes. Thank you, Kristen. Good morning everyone. Kristal, and I'm going to tell you about the coastal zone management, habitat restoration, protection and restoration, bipartisan infrastructure law funding. It's just a pool of money from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act given to Noah Office, Coastal Management for Coastal Zone Management programs, which our office is one of them for habitat restoration projects in the coastal zone of the country. Next slide please. So sorry. Can you go one more step back? Which do you want to know? I mean, no problem backward, sorry. All right. Okay. Yeah. Sorry about that. So this project is through the Noah office for Cost management. And they got over $207,000,000 to be spent over the next five years. And we've had about three cycles, we've had three cycles of funding, so we have two more to go. And this funding is focused on making impacts against climate crisis in the coastal zone area of the country. It is basically for three major goals. It's for supporting the Coastal Zone Management Act, which is a bill that establishes the coastal zone management programs across the country, and the Delaware Coastal Program is one of them. It also helps to advance the help for each of this program, and it also helps to fulfill the H, which is the more popular name of the IL funds. Next slide. The eligible, Those funds can only be used for three major things, which is one, habitat restoration or for restoration, engineering, design and planning, or land conservation. The funding amount that we've put there is what has been for the last three years. We do not know if this will change, as we've heard unofficially that Noah could be combining the next two years of funding. We do not know if that will mean higher cap or maybe a higher number of projects for acustozone management. Next slide, this project, this funding is competitive grants, it means all the coastal zone management programs across the country. I think we're currently 34 are going to submit applications and compete for these grants. It's just limited to the Coastal Zone Management programs and we, the Department of den rec, we can submit on behalf of all our partners and that includes counties, cities, tribes, and different government agencies. And the sweet part of this project is that it doesn't require any match, so it is 100% match free. And yeah, I think that's the nicest part of this funding. Next slide. Yeah. There are some specific type of projects that this particular grant can be used for. The grant is only for projects that are located or publicly owned land. Land owned by cities, tribes, government agencies. Which means that we cannot give money out to, say, nonprofits for a land that the title is held by nonprofit, except they're willing to pass on the title to another public entity. Also, it could also be used for projects on the land that a public entity holds the easement. If there is any kind of project that the private entity is ready to give like an easement to a public entity, then yeah, we can sponsor that kind of project. Also, the project should be in the state's coastal zone management. But as Kristen said, the good thing is that No considers the entire state of Delaware coastal projects for the plant can be located anywhere in Delaware. I'll give example the last one that we submitted. We submitted in conjunction with the city of Wilmington to have a phase two Westland Park in South Community in the hope that that park could help mitigate the mosquito and flood issue. There has been a legacy problem in this region next slide. So here I'm going to hand over to Chris who is going to talk about some of the things that we've learned in helping our partners apply for past projects and how we think we can also leverage those going forward. Chris, so I'm going to go through with you just some key components of what constitutes a strong proposal, as well as just the general application guideline timeline. Sorry. From my experience, Noah likes to see a couple of key things for the BIL funding. In particular, they want to fund projects that are about either conserving conservation, habitat restoration, or land acquisition. Those are the three areas that the BIL funding goes towards. Those are the proposals that we would be able to assist in creating. They want projects that show how what you're trying to either conserve, restore, or acquire, how it relates to climate resiliency, or how you are going to aid in that space becoming more resilient to climate change. Whether that is planting more climate hardy species or building up more coastlines and things like that. How that is going to increase that, because we all know the climate is changing and anything that we do going forward needs to Speak to that very real reality. I want to say there's really two big aspects of these grants, long term management and diversity, equity, inclusion, justice, and accessibility. I can't stress how big of a piece that is. Any project that you would like to have funded through BIO, you really need to speak to how it will increase the participation of historically underserved or economically economically challenged areas. How it will increase their access to those areas. How it will increase their daily lives. How they can get involved in volunteering with perhaps hoping to implement the restoration and conservation plans you have. That's big. For instance, with our project, I suggested that we work with underserved high schools from each of Delaware's three districts or counties and have them come out and help us actually implement, as well as monitor our restoration throughout their high school journey. In this pot of money, you can use it to facilitate that transportation, meals, things like that. You can write into the grant because that directly speaks to allowing these underserved communities to participate in these spaces where they're normally not able to next slide a long term monitoring. Noah likes to see plans that are one ready to go. They like to see that you know what you want to do, you know how you want to do it, and as soon as they give you the money, you're going to be able to do it. And they also want to see that once the restoration or conservation work is done, that you have a plan, monitor and manage after the fact. Because it just makes no sense to give this money. You do these big restoration projects and then nobody keeps it up. The funding period is over. Writing. That in the grant is also one of the most important pieces of these proposals. And they also like partnerships, right? The more partners, whether that be state, federal, other NGO's, et cetera, community based organizations, the more partners you can speak to involving in your project, the stronger your proposal is going to be. They love seeing that. They also want you to speak a little bit about how you are qualified to actually implement and carry out the plans that you are proposing. So just that's not, that's not a huge section of these proposals, but it's something that you should definitely put in there how you or your organization will be able to carry out this work and the experience that you have, where if you lack the experience, the partners that bring that sort of experience to what you want to do and therefore will allow you to have a successful project if you have other funds that can be leveraged. They also like to see that it's not a negative to say we also are getting funding from X, Y, and Z because that just shows that there are other entities invested in what you'd like to do which will speak to a stronger proposal. Next slide, please. The last couple of slides that I've previously spoken about, and this one has a lot of information on it, but I just wanted to give you guys a little bit more and, you know, you can contact us of course. But I just wanted to give you some substance to take away from this. The graphics got messed up. Sorry about that is just a general timeline of what of the application process. In June is when we hear about the notices for applications. That's usually when no releases them. And then you usually have until August to submit a letter of intent. And a letter of intent is just like really like one to two page summary of the biggest components of the proposal, just like condensed. And once you submit a letter of intent and Noah decides they want to hear more from you and they're considering your project for funding, that's when you would submit a full proposal. And you'll hear back from Noah by September whether or not they want you to submit a full proposal. And then at that point, you would the most proposals are about 15 pages. You would submit that along with a budget and any other supporting documents. That would all go into your appendix, but that is not included in the 15 pages. So you have the 15 pages to really lay out what you'd like to do and why you feel like Noah should fund what you'd like to do. You generally submit the full application in January. You can submit it through Grants.com sorry, Grants.gov That's where everyone submits their application and that is also where you're going to whomever the PI, the project investigator is for your proposal. That's also the portal where they're going to hear whether or not you got the funding and the funding notices go out usually in late spring. So right now, for instance, we're waiting to hear back from Noah to see whether or not our proposal was chosen to be funded. We should know around April, no later than May. Would you hear back from them? That's just a rough timeline. But again, if you need help, we can definitely go in deeper with that next slide, please, so we can assist you with the whole process. Basically, me and Sakina were brought on specifically to assist not only Din Rec but other outside entities. With you get this BIO funding because it's there and it's ready to be used towards these particular projects, restoration and conservation projects and land acquisition. We can help with the submission, we can help with drafting the proposal. We will help you with the letter of intent. We will help you develop a monitoring plan, long term, and adapted management plans. We help with implementation, coordination, and reporting your progress to Noah. Because one of the components, if you are awarded this grant, you have to give progress reports to every so often. They'd like to know how much have you progressed, how's it going, the success, the failures that they like to know, and we can help you do all of that. Trying to apply for this funding feels a little bit overwhelming. It's okay, because that's what we're here for. We will help you with all aspects of this grant, next slide. These are just some additional resources that I wanted to that we wanted you guys to have some access to. It will give you an overview, a more in depth overview, of what the bipartisan law is, what types of funding is available through it for what types of projects. Then also specifically, the Habitat Protection and Restoration Awards. Because there are other one of the good things about the BIL is it's not only this particular pot of money is for habitat conservation and land acquisition, but there are other grants that the funding from the BIO project speaks to. So if you go on that coastal zone management website, you'll find the links to all of that. If maybe you have projects that are different from this particular focus, then there's the grant go. That's another good resource. If you're looking for additional grants, like I said, that speaks to different sorts of projects. Then the last one actually talks about the coastal zone management and the nears, which is the National Esterine Research Reserves, which is actually the Department of den Rec I work out of if you are interested in that. And it also gives you some frequently asked questions about the BIO funding next slide and that is it. So we'd like to thank you for your time and that is mine and Saquinas contact information. I am sure that Kristen is also very willing to give out her contact information. We're all here to help. Thank you. And we'll take any questions that you might have. All right. Thank you both so much. Great presentation, a lot of great information, and I think you guys did a really good job of laying out exactly what different communities could expect. It sounds like you, based on what services you're able to offer, it sounds like if a local government was interested in a project, would they just reach out directly to you? And then it would be like establishing a partnership to start working on that application. How does the process work to start getting engaged on a project with you both? If there's a project that you'd like to submit for this, just reach out to either Sakina or Kristen directly. You can e mail us. You can call us and we'll help you get the process started if you'd like. In particular, I'm in charge of implementation and long term management development. If there's a site that you'd like me to come out and visit, I'm more than happy to do that just to get a clearer picture of what you want and help you from there. Subpoena as well. We're always happy to go and meet face to face and see what you have and what you want to do with it. Just reach out to us and we're more than happy to assist. Awesome. Yeah, just to add to that is we've not had this problem in the last years, but we don't know what could happen. In the last years, we were able to submit just three proposals, it's maximum of three proposals per Custozone Management program. But this year we don't know if that would increase to six or the funding for projects would increase to say 12 million. But then we just anticipating that what if we get more projects than we are able to submit? We are currently developing a prioritization plan that scores the criteria that no uses to score these proposals, in addition to adding some of the criteria that are very important to Delaware, like our climate action plan, Delaware Wildlife Action Plans. And if your project helps to advance or help support these goals, so we can use that to score project, pick those that we believe have more chances of getting funded to pursue. We don't have this problem at the moment, but we are just thinking in the future if we have a problem. Just to clarify on that, there's three different types of projects that you can do. You can just habitat restoration, you can do planning and engineering, or you can do I guess acquisition is the third one? Yeah. When you're going to evaluate those, how are you going to rank the three different categories against each other or will those separate categories be considered independent from each other? Thank you. Test. No, I was just going to spina could speak to this more because she's really more versed in the technicalities of the proposal, but they're separate but equal if that makes sense. I see Joanne asked about sources for acquiring the land for conservation. You can actually if we have the two cycles, we're not sure but you can actually put in a proposal for the acquisition and then I'm pretty sure, put in a proposal for the conservation of the land that you acquired. Is that correct? Sina. We don't know about that yet. It's a question we've gotten and also we don't know if that would change based on this new rule. So we are just waiting for this new Nf to know like, the exact if people would be able to put in combined proposal for, say, acquisition and then restoration. We're not sure. Okay. We're not sure. But just to answer your question to Colin, is that the way we would rank this project is? I know like land acquisition could simply seem like it doesn't have any or maybe design and planning could simply seem like it doesn't have any ecological benefit, but it does. For instance, our last project, we're actually at the engineering, design and planning level of this wetland park. But we wrote into our proposal how when this park is developed, how it will help control mosquito infestation in the region, and flood management, which is what the restoration implementation would do. But of course, the design and planning is a step towards that restoration. We look at the bigger picture of what the projects can do. Makes sense. Makes sense. I see Kristen has her hand up. Yeah. I was just going to ask if you could clarify. Are there any stipulations with acquisition, like the party that is allowed to acquire it and also, you know, what type of access they have to provide. All right. Thank you. Sorry. Before I do that, I see a lot of questions about the presentation in the chart. Yes, the presentation is going to be available for everyone and I know Colin is making a recording, so I think that would also be available to everyone. Yes. For the acquisition? Yes. The title can only be held by a public entity, maybe a city, a county, or a government agency. A private entity, like non profit, cannot hold title to land that is acquired using this grant. I'm going to go ahead and stop sharing my screen now and open it up in case anyone else has any questions they want to ask or specific projects they want to share about. We usually keep these drop in sessions to around 30 to 45 minutes at the front end for some presentation on a particular topic. And then we really like to keep them, we call them drop in sessions because they're really just that we want you to drop in. Tell us a little bit about your project that you might be working on. Ask any questions. I'll open it up. I know we've got Mayor Collier on and a representative from Fenwick Island. Joanne, I'm not sure where you're from, but we would love to hear about all your projects If you're interested in sharing at this point or if you just wanted to hear some more information, that's totally fine too. But just want to open up the floor here. Yes. Hi. We're from the town of Slaughter Beach and we were thinking about an acquisition project to purchase some land that we know it's a pond and the area around it that we would like to purchase for conservation purposes. Can you tell us exactly what we would need to do on that? The property will go up for sale shortly. All right. Thank you so much for land acquisition. What would happen is when anyone has a project, we meet with them like with our team at Den Rec and they tell us more about this project. Some people already have like maybe a one page written about their project and it's benefits to the coastal environment or maybe it's benefit to underserved community and things like that. And like I said, if we do not have more than the required project and we want to go ahead with this project, Noah requires us to submit a yellow book appraisal alongside the application for a land acquisition. The next thing that would do if we do decide to go ahead with this project, will be to get an appraisal of the land before the application opens. So we are talking of before June and then we'll take it from there. If we're going forward with this application in June when the no fall comes out, we're going to also send it out to everyone, to our partners, and then we can start developing this proposal. Okay. Okay. So let me just clarify. It's our responsibility to get the land appraisal and and then bring it to you and you'll decide whether it works moving forward. Yes, we can decide if it fits into the we can decide if it fits into the, excuse me, if it fits into the goal of the funding before going out. Another thing is, I don't know, there might be other opportunities within the Rec that could pay for your appraisal. I can find out, I'm not sure. But I do know there are several funding that could help smaller cities bring their project up to a point where it is ready to apply for federal funding. So we can search about those kind of funding. But if we do not find yes, you'll be responsible for getting the yellow book proposal and then we proceed from wondering if they do it. If they do, the application does move forward. Can the appraisal be covered under something called like a pre ward cost? Have it reimbursed? No. I don't think so. But we can ask our regional no, our regional coordinator. Okay. Yeah. And on that I was also just going to ask real quick, just before you guys jump in jump, I was going to the way that the funding works, is it is it that you're like, if your project is successful, do you get the money on the front end or do you get reimbursed for it over several quarters? Now you get you get the money up front. But okay, there is an opportunity to have Denrek get the money and dispose it to the partner, but there's also an opportunity for Denrek to ask Noah to dispose directly to the partner. It all just depends on Noah knowing that we, the Coastal Zone Management Program is aware. For instance, our last application, the City of Wilmington, submitted the application themselves. And, you know, it's just need no, just needed to know that we're aware and we had the co PIs on this application. So that actually helped us save some time because having then sub media application means we have to go through review through our management. Which could take a lot of time, which would also limit the number of days we have to develop the proposal. It can go either way. The money can come through dental program, but it can also go through directly to the partner. If we let no one know that we are aware of it. We try to make this process as easy as possible for the partners that we're working with as far as getting funding to actually pay for the actual appraisal. There is a ton of funding out there. The money that comes directly out of your pocket can be zero and we will really work to help you. That's what we're here for, to help you find the funding. We are technically under the BIL, but we are in Dinrech. We work with Noah and we will help you find the funds to accomplish what you're wanting to accomplish. Because the goal is to protect, conserve, and restore. Yeah. Is there anyone else that has any questions or wanted to share any info about a project that they're working on? May call your head I guess. Put a question in the chat. I think it may be justice to me, but it's okay. I can answer it. As you stated, Milton is a current beneficiary. Can we seek additional funding opportunities? Absolutely. It may not be through the RCP again, but this through BIL with Noah, through Brick, Through with through any of the funding opportunities that are going to be coming open in the very near future? Yes, absolutely. As far as I'm concerned, I'm here to help support that as well. And I know that you guys at the Gap program obviously are doing the same thing. Yeah, I think between all the technical assistance we got, I'm really hopeful that we can get some good projects submitted here. May Collier, I know you guys are working on quite a list of things, but yeah, I was just thinking going off of what Kristen said, I feel like maybe a good strategy could be maybe for some of the communities that aren't quite ready to apply for coastal zone management, funding might be to take that first step to go for the RCP opportunity, get a baseline level of planning done, and then that sets you up well, to maybe submit something in a later year. Yeah, I between all the different types of opportunities and different ways that you can fund various portions of the project, I think that these Denrek opportunities hit you in all of the spaces that you really need them to. That's really great because yeah, like you said, Kristen, one of the biggest challenges we've seen in a lot of especially smaller communities is getting to that point where you can submit an implementation grant. It's it's a big challenge. It's really good that Denrek has a lot of different opportunities to meet you where you're at in the process, whether you're really in the early stages and just trying to plan out some initial thoughts and ideas or if you're ready to start breaking ground soon. Yeah, the funding limits that we have with the RCP. We write it into our two year award cycles. We try to spread about 150,000 across two years and cover a breadth of projects. But the robust planning and design work that is capable through like the BIL, they have so much more money available for that type of work that I wouldn't really totally shy away from going for that. Yeah, just to add to that is having the funding like the RCP or other funding could also set you up for success with BIL and also proving that you've done similar projects in the past. Like Chris said, for instance, our projects with the city of Wilmington, we actually cited the first phase one wetland park, especially because we also have almost the same partners. That just speaks to our ability to achieve this project. Anybody who wants a copy of the Powerpoint, if you could just drop your e mail into the chat and I will e mail that to everybody who wanted. As soon as the no comes out, we are going to send it to IPA so that they can forward to everyone. Yeah, absolutely. We could also maybe share the one pager that you sent along earlier. Actually, I think I might have it downloaded. I could go ahead and attach it in the chat here because I think that provides a really good snapshot of it as well. Oh, I see Joanne left a message in chat. Awesome. Okay, let's see Joanne, would you also mind dropping your e mail for me? Oh, all right. I can't it's not letting me attach the one pager. But Sakina, maybe you could just send that one pager out when you send the slides as well to everyone? I think that would work. Yeah. I'll send it along with a slide in one e mail. Cool. Okay. All right. Well, I'm not sure if anyone else had any other questions or anything. We can hang on for a few more minutes if anyone had any any last minute things. But otherwise, if not, you are free to leave if there's no other questions. Joan, I think you're on mute. We have a project in mind but it's currently owned privately. We really would like to speak a little more in depth with some of your representatives to find out exactly what we need to do to be sure that we have covered everything that we need. Yeah, there are two parcels and there are actually two different parcels. They're both owned privately and we would like to preserve them. All right. So we can reach out to you to organize a meeting with coastal section. But I'll just give you an example of something similar we've done in the past with the city of Wilmington. We had like a part of the past owned by DPN L, and also one owned by the Newcastle County. So, what Norah sent us back with the review was to show proof that these entities were ready to hand over the Passl to the city. So, at the point where we're making the proposal, a letter from those from the owners saying affirming that they are willing to, you know, hand over the land to maybe the city or any publicantsi do. When you say handover, you mean sell? Yeah. So if they want to sell if they are going to sell the land, then we're going to have to write the acquisition cost in the proposal. So we have to make that known. And we're going to have to do an appraisal for that to determine the cost and also include that in our proposal. Okay. I understand. Yeah. Subpoena I had. I know that some of the privately owned lands sometimes if while we're in the process of getting the funding, they are they agreed to a conservation easement while the state is trying to secure the funding to purchase the land. Is that is that another route as well? Yes, but then we also have to show the proof that they agreed to go into conservation ease. Okay. Sounds good. Sounds like that might be a good project. There will be others that pop up as well, and Mayor Collier, I'm sure, will be able to reach out if he has anything in particular he wants to share as well. Yeah. With that, unless there's any other things, I think I'm going to go ahead and stop the recording.
March GAP Drop-In Hours
From Kristie Marmo March 15, 2024
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