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Board and EDA begin revising MOU to speed small grants and clarify EDA role
Summary
The Economic Development Authority asked the Board of Supervisors to consider a revised MOU that would allow the EDA limited delegated authority and a small operating fund to approve modest grants and matches without repeated board approval; supervisors supported the idea generally but voiced caution about oversight for larger awards.
The Economic Development Authority presented six EDA-originated bullet points for a revised memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Board of Supervisors. A central proposal: establish a term-limited local fund or delegated appropriation that the EDA could use to approve smaller grants, matches or administrative actions without returning to the board for each item, while larger state/federal awards or land transactions would continue to require Board review.
"The idea there is to give the EDA some bucket of money to do a certain thing or certain things and let the EDA make the decisions about, okay, we're gonna give this $10,000 grant or this $20,000 grant without the back and forth," Don Long, EDA chair, said, framing the proposal as an efficiency reform. Supporters — including supervisors who noted staff—s strong track record — said delegation could free the board to focus on higher-level decisions. Skeptical supervisors urged caution: one supervisor warned, "When you do things so fast, you make mistakes," and said larger awards (for example, multi-hundred-thousand-dollar Governor's Opportunity Fund grants) should remain subject to tighter processes.
Staff suggested an interim deliverable: produce a term-sheet (business terms) that lists the proposed authorities and dollar thresholds for the board to review before drafting a legal MOU. The Board agreed that staff and county attorneys should draft a term-sheet and then a first legal draft for each body to review.
