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As discussed earlier, the City recently streamlined its annual grant process to combine funding from CDBG, HOME, Lower Income Housing Funds, and City Grant General Funds into a single Housing and Human Services Grant (HHSG) program. The arts /culture and youth components of the former City Grant program were recombined to form the new "Community Grant" (CG) program. This section of the report discusses the CG program application review process and provides a recommendation for allocating funds. DISCUSSION Information on the CG program was provided to a large audience at two regional pre application informational workshops held on December 7 and 9, 2009, in Pleasanton and Livermore. Attendees also received information about Pleasanton's HHSG program as well as similar grant programs offered by the cities of Livermore and Dublin. At the January 13, 2010, meeting, several members of the Youth Commission had questions about the Community Grant process. Approximately one -third of Youth Commissioners leave the Commission each June due to graduation from high school. Because of the significant turnover, staff decided to conduct a step -by -step review of the general process at the February 10 meeting. Items emphasized during this review included, but were not limited to, responsibility for allocating taxpayer funds, consideration of funding requests for the overall benefit of the community, and the individual grant limit of $7,500. A total of 14 CG applications were received by the February 1 deadline. Nine (9) of these were in the arts /culture category with a total aggregate request of $56,915 (for the $40,000 available). A total of five (5) applications were received in the youth category with a total aggregate request of $31,174 (for the $30,000 available). The 14 CG applications received are listed in Table B of Attachment 1. Arts /culture applications were reviewed by the Civic Arts Commission at its meeting of March 1. The minutes from the meeting are included as Attachment 4. Youth applications were reviewed by the Youth Commission at its meeting of March 10. The minutes from the Youth Commission meeting are included as Attachment 5. At each meeting, representatives from each applicant agency made a presentation to the appropriate commission. After reviewing all applications and presentations, the commissions discussed the merits of each project and determined that all projects that had applied should receive funding. Each commissioner was asked for her /his recommended funding amount for each project, and the calculated average determined the level of funding for each project that would be recommended to the City Council. The results of this process are depicted in Table B of Attachment 1. Under the new provisions for the HHSG and CG programs, the Youth Commission also requested that the remaining, unallocated amount of $2,723 be carried over to the FY 2011 -12 grant cycle. Page 7 of 23