Text on blue background: The Hourglass Project - Jobs Action Plan
The Hourglass Project will work on a job action plan for the County of San Luis Obispo.

County Allocates Economic Development Funds to Jobs Development Project

Author: Administrative Office
Date: 4/24/2019 8:37 AM

$300,000 of funds related to easing local economic impacts of the closure of Diablo Canyon Power Plant have been allocated to a project that could benefit the entire county.

The County of San Luis Obispo has granted $300,000 in economic development funds for a project that will set the foundation to develop future jobs on the Central Coast.

On Tuesday, April 23, the County Board of Supervisors approved a $300,000 grant agreement with the Hourglass Project to be used for the development of a Central Coast Jobs Roadmap and Action Plan.

The grant funding provided by the County will make up about 35 percent of the total funding required for the project. Non-governmental agencies and organizations in the private sector will provide most of the remaining funding needed for the project.

“The economic health and vibrancy of our community is critical to this place we all love to call home and our region needs a path forward with the coming closure of Diablo Canyon,” said Guy Savage, Assistant County Administrative Officer. “This project is a public-private partnership that will provide an actionable approach to helping us all work together to restructure and build a stable local economy.”

The funding was made possible through Senate Bill (SB) 1090, which was authored by Senator Monning and signed into law by Governor Brown in September 2018 to, in part, ease the local impact of the closure of Diablo Canyon Power Plant. SB 1090 ensured that the community would receive $85 million in Community Impact Mitigation Funds, which are broken into two components: The Economic Development Fund ($10 million) and the Essential Services Mitigation Fund ($75 million). Roughly half of the Essential Services Mitigation Funds will go to local schools to support and maintain critical programs.

To date, the County has received $400,000 of this funding. The remaining $100,000 will be held for other grant purposes or for use to further assess the local impacts of the closure of the power plant.

View the staff report and other attachments to the agenda item heard by the Board of Supervisors.