BOARD00079 ‎(2)‎

• Board Meeting Date: 11/14/2006
• Description: OWCDP Section- Proposed Revisions to Guidelines for Financial Assistance to Covered Entities to Develop Water Conservation Plans
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Memo

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submitted invoices and supporting do~umentation, the OWCDP proposes to clarify the term
"project plan description" by referring to it as the scope of work and requiring that the project ._
budget accurately reflect the tasks within the detailed scope of work. Therefore, staff has
provided additional required criteria for all submitted scopes of work and project budgets,
ultimately making it easier for staff to 'track grant funded projects. The additional criteria
comply with State fiscal and procureIl1ent rules.

These changes are necessary due to recent grant application evaluations where Staff
determined that there was insufficient information and detail necessary to award the grant
request and to process future invoices for payment under the State fiscal and procurement
rules.

2) The OWCDP staffis requesting that the language pertaining progress report, following
section 4 (b) (6) within the Application Submittal Requirements, be amended. In this case,
the proposed changes resulted from ongoing dialogue with several grant awardees who
repeatedly requested clarification on the purpose and necessary components of the progress
reports. Expanding and clarifying this submittal requirement is necessary to improve the
efficiency with which the grant funded project is administered by all parties. These changes
are necessary to meet the grant awardees need for direction and guidance on this issue, as
well as to ensure consistency in all progress reporting in the future.

3) The OWCDP staff is requesting that the matching funds description, following 4 (c) within
the Application Evaluation Criteria, be amended to include further clarification on how the
minimum match shall be calculated. Past grant applications have calculated the minimum Ie
25% match based on the grant amount requested instead of the total project amount. In order
to eliminate confusion, staff is proposing to add clarifying language and an example
calculation.

4) The OWCDP staff is requesting the Application and Award Timing section 4 (f) - Payment,
be amended to add necessary State fiscal and procurement rule language, which will inform
grant awardees that all submitted invoices for reimbursement will be paid out upon the
creation of a contract or purchase order generated by the Accounting Department. Proposed
changes will also provide awardees information pertaining to the timing of the expected
reimbursement.

In addition to the aforementioned proposed Guideline amendments, more general revisions are
proposed to streamline the Guidelines, remove redundancy, and organize more efficiently,
ultimately making the Guidelines more user friendly and reducing the amount of time staff has
historically taken to clarify the same points of confusion for many applicants.

Staff Recommendation
Staff is recommending adoption of all proposed changes as stipulated in the attached revised
version of the Guidelines for Financial Assistance to Covered Entities to Develop Water
Conservation Plans '

Attachment

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Flood Protection. Water Project Planning and Finance. Stream and Lake Protection
Water Supply ProteCtion. Conservation Planning