3 Responses to “Bicyclists - The Future is Now”

1. Derek Says:
   May 12th, 2008 at 1:06 pm

   “The four pilot communities are Columbia, MO, Marin County, CA, Minneapolis, MN and Sheboygan County, WI. Each community is receiving $25 million dollars to spend over four years. Approximately $5 million in each area is used to administer the Federal grant, making $20 million available for actual in-ground improvements and programs.”

   David, do you care to elaborate why $5 million dollars is spent simply to administer the grant? That seems outrageous and wasteful.

2. David Hoffman Says:
   May 12th, 2008 at 4:36 pm

   It isn’t as bad as it seems. Most grants have a portion of the funding set aside for “overhead” or “administration” - in other words, a way to pay the staff that is actually running the program. They typical “administration” for most grants is 20% - that goes for non-profits, too. In fact, in the non-profit advocacy world folks need to -count on- that administration portion of the grant as a way of paying staff. For example: if a grant for $100,000 is given to an organization to purchase and install bike racks, $80,000 would be set aside for buying and installing them - the remaining $20,000 could be used to pay a staffer to source, find locations for, work on permitting issues, and oversee installation of the racks. Of course, they don’t have to use all $20,000 for that - if funding was left over, it could be used to purchase more racks…

3. Derek Says:
   May 13th, 2008 at 11:19 am

   Ok, thanks for the clarification. I completely understand a 20% administrative overhead for a $100,000 grant, or even a $1m grant. I was just shocked at the $5m price tag. I suppose red tape is expensive

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