Update from CAO Jean Rousseau

Tuesday, February 23, 2010:

Tulare County Administrative Officer Jean Rousseau and Tulare County Supervisors Allen Ishida, Steve Worthley, Mike Ennis and Pete Vander Poel are in Washington, D.C. from Feb. 23-25 to meet with members of Congress, their senior staff and federal administrators seeking support for Tulare County projects and issues. Also in Washington this week: City and county officials who represent their entities on the Tulare County Association of Governments, which focuses on Tulare County’s transportation needs.

“It’s 3 p. m. in California and we have just finished our last meeting on Capitol Hill in Senator Dianne Feinstein’s office. We met with Feinstein’s staff to talk about the top three legislative priorities in our platform … our anti-gang initiative, continued funding for Success Dam and funding for rural water systems for our County’s disadvantaged communities.

“County Supervisors Allen Ishida, Mike Ennis, Steve Worthley and Pete Vander Poel, and Farmersville Councilman Paul Boyer and Lindsay Mayor Ed Murray had a very meaningful conversation about our gang prevention initiative, a multi-faceted proposal to create two community centers in areas that do not currently such facilities, and to make them available to community-based organizations that can provide community services and supervised youth activities after school, and on weekends. The Senator’s staff was very interested in our plans to also expand the Board’s Service Learning Grant Program, and in our two-year history of providing the means and encouraging local youth to participate in meaningful community service.

“We also had a very good discussion about the need to provide funding to perform preliminary environmental studies for rural water projects that are not currently funded. The environmental studies are the key toward obtaining funding for water improvement projects, but there is no funding source to do these studies, and that limits implementing solutions.

“In our first meeting today we met with the senior staff for Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works to talk about local projects we want funded under the next Transportation Bill. Staff told us that this bill may or may not be reauthorized this year. The Board wanted to discuss our Avenue 416 widening project, a $16 million effort to widen the portion of Avenue 416 between Dinuba and Highway 99 from two to four lanes.

“Our second meeting was with Congressman John Duncan, who is the ranking member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. Again, we walked about our Avenue 416 project. Congressman Duncan was very positive … He was pleased to learn that we have already completed all of the environmental work for this project.

“Tomorrow (Wednesday) we have a many meetings, but two are especially important. Senator Boxer is sponsoring a water issues meeting for us, along with her senior staff and the key staffers from Senator Feinstein’s Office and Congressman Devin Nunes’ office. At this meeting our legislators are interested in working with us to try to reprioritize the Army Corps of Engineer’s funding to move forward with improvements to Success Dam. That will be a key meeting for us.

“Then at 4:30 p.m. our Board members will meet with national director and associate director of the President’s National Office of Drug Control Policy. We will be discussing how to retain federal funding for HIDTA (High Intensity Drug Trafficking) and how the Federal government can assist our Sheriff with Tulare County’s efforts to combat marijuana cultivation and drug cartel activity in our national parks and within our foothill communities.”