Under this announcement, EDA announces general policies and application requirements for the Community TAA Program.
The purpose of the Community TAA Program is to create and retain jobs by providing project grants to communities (cities, counties, or other political subdivisions of a State or
credit:
a consortium of political subdivisions of a State, including District Organizations of Economic Development Districts) that have experienced, or are threatened by, job loss resulting from international trade impacts.
Grants under the program can be used to support a wide range of technical, planning, and infrastructure projects to help communities adapt to pressing trade impact issues and diversify their economies.To be eligible to apply, communities must be certified under one of the following three TAA programs:
TAA for Workers, TAA for Firms, or TAA for Farmers.
Applications will be competitively evaluated in order to maximize the economic revitalization impact of the program based on the extent to which applications address the following six criteria:
1. Supporting small and medium-sized communities, defined as communities with a population of 100,000 or less.
2. Assisting the most severely impacted communities in terms of the number of workers in the community that are impacted in connection with TAA certifications.
3. Delivering a high return on investment in terms of creating and saving jobs, leveraging public-private partnerships, and utilizing best practices in project management.
4. Supporting Regionalism, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship by strengthening regional cluster strategies and fostering technology commercialization.
5. Supporting Global Trade/Competitiveness by supporting high growth/high potential companies and advancing business clusters with significant export potential.
6. Growing the Green Economy by promoting renewable energy and energy efficiency, greening existing processes or functions, and through green building (for example, a structure certified under the U. S. Green Building Councils Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) system).See the full FFO announcement for further details.
PLEASE NOTE:
As noted above, specific deadlines apply to different applicant categories for eligibility purposes.
Please read the FFO announcement carefully to make sure you determine the category into which your community fits and that the community submits its preapplication and/or application on time.