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The California Air Resources Board (CARB) is pleased to announce a competitive grant solicitation of $5 million for a Statewide Planning and Capacity Building Project Administrator (PCB Administrator) to administer Planning and Capacity Building (Planning) projects, and support implementation of Clean Mobility in Schools (CMIS) and the Sustainable Transportation Equity Project (STEP) for Fiscal Year (FY) 2022-23.
The competitive solicitation is open to California-based nonprofit organizations, local governments, tribal governments, and public institutions of higher education. Applicants must have the capacity to serve as a statewide administrator, experience in equitable transportation planning, and the skillset to support organizational and community capacity building. CARB must receive complete applications by no later than 11:59 pm (Pacific Time) on September 22, 2023. The PCB Administrator will be responsible for distributing $3 million of the $5 million to Planning awardees, and the remaining $2 million is intended to support the PCB Administrator’s other implementation activities, including capacity building, administrative, and project implementation support to all Planning, CMIS, and STEP awardees selected by CARB through a separate Request for Applications (RFA) process.
Q&A Sessions
CARB will hold two Question and Answer (Q&A) sessions during the Solicitation period, at which time staff will be available to answer clarifying questions regarding the Solicitation process, eligibility, and anything else related to the current Solicitation. CARB will not answer questions regarding this Solicitation before or after the Applicant Q&A Sessions. The Applicant Q&A Sessions will be held at the dates and times listed below.
Q&A Session #1:
Date: August 17, 2023
Time: 2:00 pm (Pacific Time)
Q&A Session #2:
Date: September 6, 2023
Time: 10:00 am (Pacific Time)
Interested parties may email questions to Violet Martin. Written questions submitted three business days prior to each Q&A session will be given priority. Staff will collect all questions and respond during each Q&A session. All answers provided during the Q&A sessions are draft and final responses will be posted on CARB’s website three business days following each Q&A session.
Background
This Solicitation is focused on increasing transportation equity in disadvantaged and low-income communities by strengthening local coordination, leadership, knowledge, and skills through tailored community-led project implementation support. The PCB Administrator will collaborate with CARB-selected Planning, CMIS, and STEP awardees and provide capacity building, administrative, and implementation support as awardees implement sustainable and multi-benefit clean transportation efforts. The PCB Administrator will also directly administer, execute agreements with, and oversee the $3 million in funds allocated to the Planning awardees. While CARB will directly oversee and manage grant agreements with CMIS and STEP awardees, the PCB Administrator, in coordination with CARB, will provide CMIS and STEP awardees with administrative support, such as disbursement request development, and other activities identified in the Solicitation.
Planning and Capacity Building as a distinct category of Clean Mobility Investments was developed to help overcome barriers identified in CARB’s SB 350 Low-income Barriers Study, Part B: Overcoming Barriers to Clean Transportation Access for Low-income Residents and address key challenges outlined in CARB’s 2022 Final Progress Report for California’s Sustainable Communities and Climate Protection Act. The purpose of this funding is to support a more diverse set of projects focused on clean transportation planning, community transportation needs assessments, community capacity building, outreach, workforce training and development, ongoing technical assistance, and other critical community-led clean mobility investment needs.
Planning and Capacity Building can help organizations prepare to implement larger clean transportation projects, such as those funded through CMIS and STEP. Both CMIS and STEP, as well as Planning, aim to address community residents’ transportation needs, increase equitable access to key destinations, reduce vehicles miles traveled (VMT), and reduce GHG emissions through a variety of community-wide synergistic activities that enable and encourage residents to utilize clean mobility solutions. Planning, CMIS, and STEP have the flexibility to fund many different types of capital, operations, planning, and capacity building projects to help meet the needs of each community within that community’s context.
The projects the PCB Administrator will help support are being selected through the Planning, CMIS, and STEP RFA CARB is releasing concurrent to this Solicitation. Through the RFA, CARB will select and award $29.65 million to fund between (2) two and (4) four CMIS and STEP projects and will use $3 million (of the $5 million allocated for this Solicitation) to fund up to 15 Planning projects in disadvantaged and low-income communities across the state.
Contact
If you have questions or comments regarding the Planning and Capacity Building Project Administrator Solicitation, please contact Violet Martin, Air Pollution Specialist.
If you are interested in continuing to receive emails about this solicitation, sign up here and select the Clean and Sustainable Mobility Options topic under Clean Transportation Incentives.
Special Accommodation
If you require a special accommodation or need these documents in an alternate format (i.e., Braille, large print) or another language, please contact Heather Choi, Air Pollution Specialist, at (279) 208-7556 as soon as possible or at least 10 business days before the relevant Q&A session. TTY/TDD/Speech to Speech users may dial 711 for the California Relay Service.
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