At a remote study session, county public works staff presented recommendations from the Kittitas Conference of Governments to allocate $360,000 in small-capital grant funding and asked the Board of County Commissioners for direction to prepare enabling documents and resolutions.

The recommendations included a $150,000 award to update the Kittitas County traffic model, a partial award of $98,000 toward the City of Cle Elum’s First Street/Oaks Avenue resurfacing request, and review of a Railroad Street rehabilitation and truck-route project that had sought $233,000. Josh Frederickson, public works, said the traffic-model application had municipal support from Cle Elum, Roslyn and other jurisdictions and was intended to provide a single baseline for evaluating future development impacts.

Why it matters: the small-capital fund pays for local infrastructure projects and the traffic-model award is intended to give county and municipal planners shared data for permit review and development impact analysis. The board’s direction will determine whether staff proceeds with formal agreements and resolutions for the recommended awards.

Public works said the three awards together fit under a $360,000 funding cap established for the small-capital round. “When you add up the other 2 awards, the COG recommended only a partial award of $98,000,” Frederickson said, referring to the city resurfacing request and how the partial award would still allow the city project to proceed.

Frederickson also told the board that a previously discussed fire and EMS standard-of-cover assessment — a work-program item that several fire districts had supported in letters of support — will be funded from the county’s 0.09 distressed-county sales-and-use-tax public facilities fund as a separate work-program project rather than through the small-capital grant pool.

No formal contract awards were made at the session. Frederickson requested direction to draft the necessary agreements and bring resolutions to a future meeting; a board member expressed assent and staff said they would prepare the documents.

The staff packet submitted to commissioners listed the full set of applications, scoring results from the Conference of Governments, and the recommended awards.

The board’s next step, if it confirms the COG recommendations at a subsequent regular meeting, will be adoption of resolutions and execution of funding agreements with the recipient jurisdictions.