MONTEREY COUNTY — Transportation Agency for Monterey County (TAMC) recently received the California Association of Councils of Governments (CALCOG) “Eureka! Award for Regional Excellence.”
The award was presented during the California Regional Excellence Award Ceremony on March 9 in Long Beach, giving recognition to the Salinas Valley Safe Routes to School Plan and Participatory Budgeting Program.
The plan and participatory budgeting process was “deemed to be innovative, with creative leadership and thinking needed to develop and implement new ideas that can serve as examples or best practices for others to follow,” according to TAMC.
The Salinas Valley Safe Routes to School Plan and Participatory Budgeting Program was a two-year effort that identified barriers to safe access for students at 22 public schools in South Monterey County and recommended both infrastructure and programmatic improvements. A key focus of the plan was developing an equitable process that meaningfully engaged transportation-disadvantaged community members.
Community participation is often limited by language barriers, distrust of government, lack of transportation, limited time to attend meetings, childcare needs and limited experience with civic engagement. To address these challenges, the Transportation Agency dedicated a local funding source to support Safe Routes to School projects selected directly by the community through a participatory budgeting process.
This process relied on community steering committees to identify projects, which were then voted on by residents to determine which would receive funding. The result was a streamlined, two-year path to advancing projects that reflect community priorities and deliver meaningful safety improvements around schools.
“While participatory budgeting is not a new concept, what is innovative is our multipronged approach leveraging partner’s strengths to engage transportation-disadvantaged community members to improve safe routes to school,” said Todd Muck, TAMC’s executive director, upon receiving the award. “This is the gamechanger that has made a difference and why our work with Monterey County Health Department, Ecology Action and the cities of Gonzales, Soledad, Greenfield and King City to develop the Salinas Valley Safe Routes to School Plan is being recognized.”
Salinas Valley Safe Routes to School Plan was funded through a $664,127 Caltrans Sustainable Transportation Planning Grant and $126,501 of Measure X Safe Routes to School Program funds. The projects selected through the Participatory Budgeting process were funded by $1 million ($250,000 for each city) in Regional Surface Transportation Program reserve funds.
The success of the Salinas Valley Safe Routes to School and Participatory Budgeting program has been duplicated in North Monterey County in collaboration with agency partners to create safe routes to schools in the respective communities.
Safe Routes to School is a TAMC program that offers tools, programming and resources to schools, guardians and communities aimed at improving safety and traffic around schools. The program’s goal is to keep every child safe and healthy by reducing the number of students involved in collisions to zero. For more information, visit saferoutesmonterey.org.
