In This Issue:
- Legislative Policy Committees Begin
-
Provide Feedback on the Draft Livable Communities Act Program Changes
Legislative Policy Committees Begin
This week, Metro Cities’ four policy committees held first meetings. Meetings included legislative updates and initial discussion on potential policy modifications and topics. If you have not signed up and would like to participate in the policy process, please contact Jennifer Dorn at [email protected].
Provide Feedback on the Draft Livable Communities Act Program Changes
The Metropolitan Council is seeking feedback on a 50% draft plan of changes to the Livable Communities Act (LCA) grant programs for 2026. Council staff presented these draft changes to the Community Development Committee on July 7th. The draft plan includes expansions of eligible projects to include small area development plans that align with regional goals, simplification of the structure to enable development projects to submit one application for all activities which they are seeking funding (going from 9 entry points to one), streamlining scoring to make it more transparent and to ensure a variety of project types are competitive, and enabling smaller and more suburban applications to be more competitive through an updated scoring rubric. Council staff plan to integrate more monitoring and evaluation of the program, including a new grants management system to support that work. You can view the presentation slides on the draft changes HERE, and the report HERE. To provide feedback on the draft changes, you can take the Council survey HERE.
Contact Ania McDonnell at [email protected] with any questions.