Foundation gifts $100K for county RAD card program
Another $100,000 in matching funds provided by the Sonora Area Foundation is being added to the popular RAD card program that aims to help local businesses by doubling the amount of money their customers can spend by up to $100 each.
At a public meeting on Tuesday, the county Board of Supervisors unanimously approved accepting the donation to provide an opportunity for those who missed out on the initial $455,755 that ran out in less than two weeks.
The nonprofit foundation’s gift is intended to match individual card account purchases, the same as the $500,000 the county used in federal American Rescue Plan Act funds in November to cover the initial round of funding.
Individuals can purchase cards in $25 increments and have the amount doubled by up to $100, which means the end result of the Sonora Area Foundation’s infusion of $100,000 will be another $200,000 spent at eligible businesses.
Cole Przybyla, the county’s innovation and business assistance director, said about $326,000 of the initial $911,000 out there on RAD cards had already been spent at local businesses accepting them as of Tuesday.
More than 150 businesses are signed up and connected with the RAD card program, which in
volves payment exclusively via a smartphone app.
The agreement for the additional matching funds from the foundation was out for signatures from all of the involved groups as of Tuesday afternoon, Przybyla said after the meeting. He recommended people check their apps on Wednesday or Thursday morning.
Przybyla was asked by some county supervisors about glitches so far with the app, which received a major update last week that initially caused confusion among some customers and business owners.
County Supervisor Jaron Brandon said he has received hundreds of comments about the RAD cards since the program launched and suggested some form of correspondence to get answers from the contractor Modesto Improvement Partnership Inc.
The partnership, a Modesto-based nonprofit organization that developed the app, receives about 8% of the total money that the county puts into the program to cover administration and transaction fees.
“We’re paying 8 percent for administering and we want them to administer better,” Brandon said. “Maybe we should draft some of our concerns into a letter.”
Przybyla said the contractor had not yet missed delivering payments to businesses within five to seven business days as promised and recommended holding off until they finished paying them all out.
County Supervisor Ryan Campbell, who serves as board chairman, dismissed the notion of blasting the contractor in a letter.
“I think when we came into this we anticipated bugs,” Campbell said. “Cole is articulate and he can speak to any concerns.”
County Supervisor David Goldemberg said he’d heard some people were signing up on multiple email addresses to get access to more than one RAD card account, to double their money in matchable funds multiple times.
“It would be disappointing if anyone defrauded this, by using multiple email accounts,” Goldemberg said. “A lot of people were disappointed because the money ran out. I think we need to figure out how to prevent that.”
Josh Bridegroom, chief executive officer of the Modesto Improvement Partnership, confirmed to The Union Democrat in an interview on Tuesday that people could get around the $100 limit on matching funds by using different emails to make separate accounts.
“It’s really honor-system based,” he said. “We’re relying on people to do the right thing by their neighbors and friends and only take advantage of the money that’s available to them.”
Bridegroom said there’s no way for his nonprofit logistically to track or police whether people are being greedy and double-dipping. He emphasized that the money will still ultimately only go to the primary target it was supposed to benefit the most — local businesses.
Even if someone were to double-dip and claim more than $100 in matching funds, they couldn’t cash out the money or spend it anywhere other than the businesses within the county that are signed up to accept the cards.
People from outside of the county are also able to purchase cards for the participating businesses within Tuolumne County, though they too can only spend them at those businesses.
“Most people do comply with it,” he said. “Not all of it is perfect, but it’s a pretty good system.”
Bridegroom said they have 31,000 total app users throughout the tri-county area they cover, which includes Stanislaus and San Joaquin counties.
When the app update was released last week, Bridegroom said it also came at the same time as new rounds of funding being added by all three counties and resulted in them receiving just under 1,000 emails since that time from people seeking technical support.
One of the main issues was some people not seeing the amount of money they had available on the card after updating the app, but Bridegroom said that affected a small number of people and was due to a glitch between two programs that they have worked to resolve.
The board also voted 4-1 at the meeting on Tuesday to approve recommendations from a traffic speed study and scheduled a time to consider an ordinance that would increase the speed limits on portions of Jamestown, Parrotts Ferry and Merrell roads.
If approved, the ordinance would increase the speed limit from 35 to 40 mph on a roughly 1.5-mile stretch of Jamestown Road in Jamestown between Whiskey Creek and Shaws
Flat roads, from 40 to 45 mph on 2-mile stretch of Parrotts Ferry Road in the Columbia area between Iron Canyon Cove and postmile 5.65, and establish a 35 mph speed limit on a 1.2-miles section of Merrell Road in Groveland.
Brandon was the sole vote against accepting the recommendations.
Erik Pearson, a county engineer, and Blossom Scott-heim, supervising county engineer, emphasized recent traffic speed studies were required by state law.
“What we’ve seen is speed limit creep,” Scott-heim said. “People are driving faster. If we don’t change the speed limits based on the traffic studies, CHP (the California Highway Patrol) cannot enforce speed limits on those corridors.”
However, recent laws passed by the state Legislature in October will allow local jurisdictions to reduce speed limits an additional 5 mph in June 2024 to help create bicycle and pedestrian corridors in some areas.
County Supervisor Kathleen Haff, District 4 supervisor, asked why the county has to wait until 2024 to reduce speed limits. ScottHeim said it’s complicated and will require information that the county doesn’t have yet.
Haff said she believes the 35 mph limit on Merrell Road in the Groveland area should be brought all the way to Highway 120.
Brandon asked about other roads where speed limits could be reduced in future, such as Chicken Ranch Road and Stent Cutoff.
“I get a lot of calls about speeders,” he said. “It’s never, ‘The road should be faster.’ ”
Campbell reiterated the speed studies are part of a state requirement and not being driven by the county.
“This is so law enforcement officers can do their jobs,” he said before the board voted.