Each member of the San Diego County Board of Supervisors has an annual $2,000,000 Neighborhood Reinvestment Program budget, and on May 21 the Board of Supervisors approved the allocation of $627,250 Supervisor Dianne Jacob recommended from her District Two budget.
The supervisors’ 5-0 vote allocated $250,000 to Helix High School for an athletic equipment storage facility, $213,000 to the American Youth Soccer Organization’s La Mesa branch to help revitalize an athletic field at Dale Elementary School, and $164,250 to East County Farm to Table, Inc., for a mobile processing unit.
The Neighborhood Reinvestment Program is intended to provide grants to non-profit organizations for the furtherance of public purposes at the regional and community levels.
In addition to non-profit organizations, county supervisors can also fund schools and fire departments, and supervisors can also use money from their budgets to supplement other county funding for specific county projects such as parks, roads, and libraries.
Each county supervisor recommends the allocation of his or her Neighborhood Reinvestment Program funds, although those allocations must be approved by a majority of the board.
Helix High School opened in 1951 and had a 2018-19 enrollment of 2,428 students. The school is currently undergoing a major renovation and modernization project which has reduced the available storage space. The grant for partial funding of the athletic equipment storage facility will allow for the storage of athletic equipment including basketball backboards and hoops for the school’s recently-renovated gymnasium.
The La Mesa branch of AYSO, also known as Region 89, was founded in 1976. More than 1,000 players or family members benefit from AYSO Region 89 programs.
Dale Elementary School in La Mesa currently has an all-dirt athletic field and AYSO is partnering with the La Mesa-Spring Valley School District, Dale Elementary School’s Parent-Teacher Association, and Valley Mesa Softball to convert that field into a 74,300 square foot grass field which will be configured for various sports and used on a year-round basis.
The non-profit East County Farm to Table organization was created to help El Capitan High School agricultural science students market their locally-grown products.
East County Farm to Table will be partnering with the El Capitan Stadium Association, which owns and maintains the Lakeside Rodeo Grounds, to establish a Lakeside Farmers’ Market at the rodeo grounds. The Lakeside Farmers’ Market would include student-grown crops and a student-operated cut and wrap facility which would be inspected by the United States Department of Agriculture.
The mobile processing unit would allow the students to learn how to process meat at a USDA-inspected facility and would also allow them to learn various careers associated with meat processing.
