Community projects from Santa Barbara to Cambria stand to gain millions of dollars in funding thanks to Congressman Salud Carbajal’s requests in House-passed appropriations bills.
Earlier this year, the House appropriations committee announced it would accept requests from Congress members to fund specific projects in their communities. Each member could submit up to 10 projects for potential inclusion in a dozen different appropriations bills the committee was considering. The House of Representatives voted to pass nine of those bills, which include funding for eight of the 10 projects that Carbajal submitted. Now, that legislation needs to get passed by the Senate before it can head to the president’s desk.
The House-approved projects span Carbajal’s entire district, and would deliver nearly $12 million of funding to the Central Coast. The projects range from refurbishing water tanks in Cambria, to adding affordable housing in San Luis Obispo, to restoring LeRoy Park in Guadalupe, to a seismic upgrade for the Santa Barbara County Veterans’ building—and more.
“This is a new opportunity that both Republicans and Democrats agreed on to look at funding community projects like the ones that I was able to submit,” Carbajal said. “I want to underscore the bipartisan nature of this approach. … This is the first time Congress has done this in decades.”
Carbajal said the projects had to illustrate broad community support, be feasible to implement, and be within a certain cost parameter. These criteria helped Carbajal decide which projects to submit for funding.
The two projects not yet approved by the House include a $5.6 million public safety communications system in SLO County, and a $1.2 million Santa Maria intersection signalization project.
The Santa Maria intersection project, Carbajal said, “is one of the projects that Sen. [Dianne] Feinstein has also put forward, so it still has a lifeline, and I’m still hopeful that it will be considered.”
The SLO County public safety communications system could also still get funded in one of the three still-pending appropriations bills.
None of it is final until the Senate passes the bills, too, and President Joe Biden signs them in, but Carbajal is confident that will happen.
“This is a major step forward in the House, and now it’s up to the Senate,” Carbajal said. “We have every indication and hope that the Senate will continue to include these.”
This article appears in Sep 2-9, 2021.