San Mateo County zeroing in on Measure K priorities

The decision aligns with the county’s mission for Measure K since the half-cent sales tax was adopted by voters a decade ago. Since then, millions of dollars have flown into the county’s coffers and back out to support affordable housing developments, health care programs and initiatives, emergency preparedness and other community programming.

Of the roughly $110 million the county expects to bring in this fiscal year through Measure K, the county will have about $43 million of unallocated funds to direct toward priorities. Board Vice President David Canepa said he likes the current balance of 40% going to housing and homelessness, 40% allocated to children, families and seniors and 20% toward emergency preparedness.

“You didn’t just land on these numbers,” Canepa said, sharing concerns tweaking the ratios would cause the public to feel their voices weren’t heard. “This was truly a thoughtful process, hard work. … I have to trust in you, trust our county executive, trust in our staff that this process was a thorough process.”

Meanwhile, Supervisor Ray Mueller and board President Dave Pine requested that more emphasis be put on emergency preparedness while supervisors Noelia Corzo and Warren Slocum emphasized affordable housing initiatives as top priorities.

Supervisors narrowed in on subcategories within each priority area as well. Disaster preparedness issues that rose to the top for supervisors included funding natural disaster mitigation efforts and infrastructure improvements, developing a communications plan ahead of a disaster and an early warning system, creating a coastside evacuation route and ensuring the county can provide language support.

On housing, supporting missing middle, emergency, permanent supportive and senior housing across the county were top concerns along with creating an emergency housing assistance program and funding legal services for eviction prevention and landlord disputes. Changing policies around accessory dwelling units, providing funds to public agencies to support housing development, creating an emergency fund for immigrants and supporting culturally sensitive mental health services were also called out as priorities.

“Everything I’ve read, the books I’ve read, the articles I’ve seen talk about affordable housing as sort of being this basic building block for things like ending poverty, creating stabilities in families and so forth,” Slocum said when advocating for creating a panel to help develop strategies to expedite housing development. “I want people to put their heads together to figure this problem out.”

Similarly, creating safety nets for immigrants in the county was a priority under the children, families and seniors category. Supervisors endorsed a request from the public to establish an immigration defense fund.

They also shared support for assisting in developing more child care centers and in-home child care facilities and career development paths into the field and others, funding domestic violence prevention efforts, creating a fund for emergency needs including various bills, and dedicating resources toward food assistance programs. As with other categories, supervisors underscored the importance of language accessibility in this category as well.

The priority areas and subcategories backed by the board will be used to help guide staff when deciding how to award grants and the allocation amounts for those grants. Requests for grant applications will begin in November and that window will close in December. Applications will be reviewed by a Measure K subcommittee early next year with a second study session and final allocations being awarded between March and June.