GRANT KIRKPATRICK, STOCKTON’S Environmental and Sustainability Officer, updated the Stockton City Council at a meeting earlier this month about Stockton Rising, a multimillion dollar project aimed at improving the environment and sustainability in Stockton.
Stockton Rising is a group of projects that are the culmination of community-based organizations and partners working together to make a plan for Stockton’s environment and applying for grants to fund those plans since 2016, according to its 2023 progress report.
It is funded by the state’s Transformative Climate Communities Program (TCC), which “funds community-led development and infrastructure projects that achieve major environmental, health, and economic benefits,” according to the program’s fact sheet.
The program awarded Stockton two rounds of implementation grant funding from 2020 to 2022 — $10.8 million and $24.2 million, respectively, according to Kirkpatrick’s presentation at the Dec. 3 council meeting.
Both grants, $35 million in total, will go to the same projects “through and through,” Kirkpatrick said at the meeting.
“It is really a very interconnected group of projects and that was our intention from the beginning, was to have every project support each other so we can move forward as a collective,” Kirkpatrick said. “Hence ‘Stockton Rising.’”
5 square miles of improvements
Some of these projects, implemented only in a 5-square-mile project area that encompasses areas of downtown and south Stockton, include installing energy and water saving devices in households, removing stumps and planting trees, distributing Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) boxes weekly and installing solar systems in homes.
The first round of TCC grant funding has been spent on a plethora of programs helping make Stockton homes more environmentally sustainable and providing seasonally fresh produce, Kirkpatrick said.
Thanks to Stockton Rising, water and energy efficient devices have been delivered to more than 250 homes, 52 single-family homes and four multi-family sites have received solar power, 1,400 trees have been planted, and more than 6,000 CSA boxes have been handed out, and over 100 job opportunities have been created.
One of the main focuses of Stockton Rising is ensuring Stockton residents serve as the main recruitment pool for its programs.
The second round of TCC grant funding hasn’t been touched yet, Kirkpatrick said. But the hope is to continue the work done with the program’s initial funding, as well as helping fund renovation of McKinley Park, buying a new hybrid electric bus that will operate in the project area, and creating more than 250 jobs for Stockton residents.
Stockton Rising is working with many different organizations to implement these projects, including Catholic Charities, the Edible Schoolyard Project, Little Manila Rising, UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation, and the San Joaquin Regional Transit District.
Kirkpatrick said working with other programs is the key to achieving their goals.
This story originally appeared in Stocktonia.
