Plan Purpose
The Rural Infrastructure Investment Plan assesses and categorizes infrastructure investments in the County’s rural communities in support of the Board’s Strategic Plan goals.  According to the American Society of Civil Engineers, the United States “infrastructure gap,” which refers to the amount of money required to meet our nation’s infrastructure needs, is estimated to be above $2 trillion. This gap is even more exaggerated in rural areas, like Northern California, where funding is much more difficult to secure. Most state and federal infrastructure initiatives are focused on urban and suburban areas and do not adequately address the unique needs of rural communities. Deteriorating or inadequate infrastructure can impact the lives of our rural residents in many ways: jeopardizing or limiting employment opportunities, decreasing quality of life and public safety, and reducing economic competitiveness.

Infrastructure is generally defined as “the system of public works of a country, state, or region including the resources (such as personnel, buildings, or equipment) that form the underlying foundation or basic framework to support an economy.” Typically, infrastructure includes roads, railways, bridges, tunnels, water supply/distribution, sewer/wastewater, electrical grids, and telecommunications, including internet/broadband.

This report serves as a repository for locally derived and supported infrastructure projects as the County explores new funding models and builds public/private/non-profit relationships to leverage investments and braid financial resources.

Though local funding may currently be inadequate to implement these rural infrastructure projects fully, opportunities exist to incrementally invest in projects, thereby positioning projects to be competitive when funding becomes available.

A local agency could develop a rough project cost estimate for an identified rural infrastructure need, for example, secure local funding for preliminary design and engineering or CEQA review, and then apply for a state or federal grant. Or the local agency could combine multiple similar projects into a larger single project, increasing the number of beneficiaries and also the (now larger) project’s overall funding competitiveness.

Methodology
To better understand the needs of rural communities within Yolo County, many sources of information were reviewed, researched, and analyzed, including:

Infrastructure improvements and recommended projects are organized by each rural community first and then categorized by Strategic Plan goal.  Many projects align with multiple Strategic Plan goals.  In those cases, projects are categorized under the goal with which they are most closely related.

Relationship to Yolo County Strategic Plan
This report, prepared for fiscal year 2023-2024, is the fourth annual rural infrastructure investment report. Previous reports can be found at here.  These annual reports are a companion to the Yolo County Strategic Plan (“Strategic Plan”).  The County’s Strategic Plan is a multi-year plan that presents a meaningful vision of the future and long-term strategic goals, indicating where resources are to be concentrated to accomplish strategic outcomes. Following Board adoption of the Strategic Plan’s goals and high-level objectives, departments develop operational plans in concert with the County Administrator to support the Strategic Plan goals, which are, in turn, aligned with the County budget. This report may also serve as an appendix to the County's Capital Improvement Plan. 

Universal Themes
Throughout the information-gathering process and analysis of survey results, several reoccurring themes were identified in nearly all the rural communities: road improvements, increased law enforcement presence, health equity, power supply reliability, and access to high-speed internet (broadband).  Power supply reliability is added to this year’s report as it ranked third, overall, in response to a survey question asking the user to rank various infrastructure categories by level of concern.  Discussion of these universal themes begins on page 7 of the report. 

Rural Community Profiles and Needs Assessments
The remainder of this report consists of a rural community profile and community-based needs assessment for each of the following rural communities: Clarksburg, Dunnigan, Esparto, Knights Landing, Madison, the town of Yolo, and Zamora.  A separate profile and needs assessment were created for the Capay Valley Region (the rural communities of Brooks, Capay, Guinda, and Rumsey, as well as the surrounding areas).  The town of Esparto is the County’s largest rural community and, therefore, has its own community profile and needs assessment.