Bring the Forest to your neighborhood for a COOLER community!

Planting with Purpose URBAN FORESTRY Grant Program

Don’t miss this awesome opportunity to learn about the Community Forestry Grant Workshop!  This is the second workshop that Valley Latino Environmental Advancement and Policy Project hosts in Fresno for San Joaquin Valley community groups and organizations.  What is great about the workshop is that you will have the agencies responsible for awarding the grants and will be available for questions after they present and as you work on your proposal to add “Green Canopies” to cool off your town.  Maybe you will plant trees so your mom, tia or abuelita can walk to church, or the store, without getting a sun burn!  Probably you have a park that has lost it’s trees to a parasite and their have been no resources to replace them or your neighborhood takes a beating from the sun due to no shading, a desert down each street.

Now is your time to Green Up!  What I was told by Chuck from California ReLEAF is that this year it will be a little different.  They will allow a suplemental project to be funded but the core will still have to be the planting of trees for shade, green house gas reduction and , ultimately, a more beautiful community!

Join us to learn the details, the tricks and to get samples.  What is most important for Cal FIRE and California ReLEAF is that they get the money out to the communities with need, good ideas and a plan.  Come learn how it’s been done and be inspired to come up with your own plane.  The process has been getting easier and the opportunity is only getting better.

For more information click on flyer above!  Thank you and see you there!

Rey Leon, Executive Director, Valley LEAP

 

TAKING MULTI-MODAL TRANSPORT TO SCALE

June 22, 2015 5:10 pm Leave a Comment

http://www.elpadvisors.com/2015/06/22/creating-a-more-mobile-future/

Americans have been driving less every year since 2007. This shift has been accompanied by regional and local planning efforts that are increasingly focused on giving residents transportation options that go beyond the automobile. There has been lots of positive momentum around transit expansion, planning for complete streets, and adopting initiatives aimed at making streets safer for people who ride bikes and walk. As planners, advocates, and their allies continue to make major multi-modal policy wins, groups are now focusing on the next big challenge. How do we translate successful experiments and policies at the local level to scalable interventions with adequate, sustainable funding? And how do we ensure that these interventions are implemented in a manner that reduces the systemic inequalities that characterize our existing transportation network?

At the local level, we’ve seen a number of plans and initiatives that have pursued multi-modal and active transportation investments. In California alone, local revenues accounted for “nearly half of the $20 billion spent on transportation” during the 2005-06 fiscal year. Following Sweden and New York’s lead, San Francisco was an early adopter of the Vision Zero campaign. The initiative envisions zero fatalities or injuries related to traffic accidents through improved street design, increased education, and enhanced enforcement of safety laws. San Jose recently adopted a similar plan and Los Angeles is considering committing to Vision Zero as part of the city’s multi-modal Mobility Plan 2035. In addition, cities across the state are adopting plans that aim to increase the share of cyclists, pedestrians, and transit riders to achieve greenhouse gas reduction targets. In LA, the city’s Sustainable City Plan aims to have these trips represent 35 percent of all trips by 2025.

So there’s a lot of momentum and planning afoot, with much of the innovation bubbling up from the local level. What seems to be missing from the equation, however, is a consistent pool of adequate funding to implement these multi-modal projects. Although 20 percent of California trips are made on foot or by bicycle, the state’s preeminent source to finance active transportation projects, the aptly named Active Transportation Program, represents just one percent of the Caltrans’ annual budget. The fund provides $300 million biannually, but due to its popularity, more than $800 million worth of projects were left unfunded during the last round. And, although local taxpayers are willing to pitch in to expand transit, the federal investments in transit continues to make up just 20 percent of total spending on surface transportation, even as people are driving less and in spite of steadily increasing transit ridership.

While the prospect of significantly increasing funding at the federal level isbleak, California’s cap-and-trade program represents a sustainable (and growing) revenue source to fund transit operations as well as capital projects. And even though the Active Transportation Program’s funding isn’t being augmented, Caltrans has pledged to adopt “new transportation funding programs to strengthen leadership in multimodal transportation.” (Perhaps the 2014 report that criticized the state agency as “out of step” with best practices has forced the organization to undergo some bureaucratic soul-searching.)

Finally, as we continue to implement projects and enact policies, let’s ensure that multi-modal transportation investments reduce inequities rather than perpetuate them. Policies like Vision Zero rely on enforcement to ensure that all road users are safe. But selective enforcement and efforts to place the onus of safety on the most vulnerable road users only serve to discourage active transportation and foster resentment between law enforcement and the communities they’re supposed to protect. Likewise, we need to critically examine who benefits most from new public transit investments. The sales taxes used to finance these methods tend to affect low-income taxpayers more acutely, but the benefits created by many new transit projects disproportionately accrue to more affluent individuals.

As we move toward a more multi-modal future, it’s encouraging to see that policies and programs are gaining traction. And, at least at the state level, there’s positive momentum to identify and secure sustainable funding sources to advance these types of projects. Let’s be sure that as we implement these projects we add value by ensuring that the benefits of a more robust transportation network accrue to the communities that need it most.

Let Valley’s green revolution begin

BY REY LEÓN

Fresno May 7, 2014 Updated 15 hours ago

We are familiar with many of poverty’s trappings in the San Joaquin Valley’s rural towns: inadequate health care, disappointing schools, pollution and a lack of good job opportunities.

Transportation poverty doesn’t come up nearly as often, but it’s real, and it’s suppressing the progress of many families.

My own hometown of Huron, a nearly 100% Latino farmworker community, is the poorest city in the state. Unemployment is always in the double digits, and represents a larger percentage than any industry’s employment numbers in the area. Officially, 30% of residents are out of work — that’s more than double the Fresno County average, itself among the highest rates in the nation. The true number of workers seeking a living-wage career, at least, is higher still.

Behind unemployment, Huron’s second-place industry is migrant farm work. In harvest season, our population grows from 6,700 to more than 15,000, at least when things are good. Today, it is evident that only by diversifying our local economy can we make it more sustainable.

Air pollution feels like an intractable problem here, too, and plays a leading role in our high rates of respiratory and cardiovascular illnesses. Pollution from vehicles is the main source of the problem.

When people in Huron do find work, it can be a three-hour drive to get there. People pile into someone’s old, carbon monoxide-spewing car or take one of the slow diesel buses. When you add in all the farm equipment nearby and ancient diesel trucks that belch out clouds of black fumes in Huron, it’s not surprising that our poor air quality results in so many health problems for people.

Meanwhile, in what feels like a million miles away, we hear that a clean vehicle revolution is underway in other parts of California. “Other” is, unfortunately, a familiar term in our community, where we are always the “other” that puts in the sacrifice but never cashes in on the rewards.

California already accounts for more than one-third of electric vehicles sold nationwide. Electric-drive buses are taking hold in many places. Even electric trucks are coming to market and are replacing dirty diesel models.

Yet, evidence of an electric revolution is almost undetectable in Fresno County — and practically unthinkable to the campesinos in my town.

While the coastal cities of the Bay Area and Los Angeles are enjoying the benefits of clean, zero-emission vehicles, it’s a very different story for us. A gallon of gas is more expensive in Huron than in Fresno, and we also pay the highest price when it comes to our health.

Don’t we deserve clean air and clean vehicles, too?

If there’s any good news, it’s that there are ambitious changes underway to improve these scenarios.

Gov. Jerry Brown has set his sights on electric vehicles, and lawmakers have introduced a plan to ensure that low-income communities and people of color who suffer the greatest consequences of vehicle pollution are full participants in California’s electric future.

The governor’s 2014-15 budget directs $200 million raised from polluting industries through the state’s successful cap-and-trade program to fund electric transportation initiatives, and prioritizes funding in low-income and disadvantaged communities.

And the Valley is likely to see millions more to support clean projects in the years ahead, when polluting oil refineries are added to the program, starting next year. The Hurons of our region will benefit immensely, as will areas such as the west and southwest of the city of Fresno.

The Charge Ahead California Initiative (SB 1275), proposed by Sen. Kevin De León, commits the state to a goal of 1 million electric cars, trucks, and buses on the state’s roads by 2023. The bill builds on existing state rebates to offset the cost of an electric car and re-targets the program to serve low-income and moderate-income Californians.

To invest further in electric vehicles, SB 1275 provides funding for ridesharing programs in low-income communities, an important means of transportation for farmworkers and their families. And it provides additional incentives, making it easier for owners of heavily polluting cars to retire them or replace them with clean ones.

Transitioning roads in Fresno County to make electric vehicles more common will not solve all the challenges of living in a small, poor, rural town, but it will definitely clean the air and improve our health.

The next step is getting the green economy and renewable technologies industry into the Valley, to provide green jobs. This is the other piece of the puzzle to enable low-income communities of color to be participants in an exciting and growing sector of California’s green economy.

Let it begin, for environmental, economic and transportation justice!

Rey León was born and raised in Fresno County. He is the founder and executive director of ValleyLEAP, an environmental and social justice organization serving communities throughout the San Joaquin Valley.
Read more here: http://www.fresnobee.com/2014/05/07/3915173/let-valleys-green-revolution-beginthe.html?sp=/99/274/#storylink=cpy

Regional Green Jobs Coalition helps STOP BIG Texas OIL for Clean Energy in California!

Check out the Video from our Press Conference: No on 23!

Happy Human Rights Day!

Or unhappy weighing in the situation on the planet with global warming induced by abusive industrial practices’ and the impact to indigenous nations/tribes and people of color. Even in the most financially advanced state of the Union and 8th strongest economy on the planet, we are observing the dismissal of the poorest Americans and workers who fuel the most single potent industry in the state. According to 2008 figures from CDFA, the industry banks on $36.6 billion dollars that then generate close to $100 Billion in related activity. Why then are the farmworker communities/regions the poorest in the state/nation? The Measure of America Human Development report highlighted the fact that the Valley continues to be one of the unhealthiest, least educated and with the most concentrated poverty in the nation. To achieve a respect for the human right to exist and subsist we need new industries based on green footprints rather than carbon. We need new industrial models that look at full circle and not bottom line. We need new culture that looks at what we can create not destroy or exploit towards inutility. Each of us Humans has the right and the power to bring all of this into fruition but we must ACTION! Join us in the effort to do all of this a bit at a time at the SJV Regional Green Jobs Coalition where we know that to grow the good is by doing it together! We are in dire need of volunteers to initiate our Millenial campaign for a new future and a new people with green capes. Check out our developing website: regionalgreenjobs.org. Ofcourse we can!

We will have a functioning donor button in the near future, stay tuned!