Explore every episode of the podcast California City News Podcast

Other people’s money: every city budget needs some, and Sacramento and Washington are sitting on billions of it. Steve Samuelian has made a career of going and getting it. The founder and CEO of California Consulting, the state’s largest grant writing firm, has more than 1,800 funded applications to show for it, most of them for California cities, school districts, and special districts.

In this episode: how the grants game has changed in recent years, what is realistic in the current state and federal budget environment, his grant writers on what separates winning applications from the rejection pile, and the specific programs your city should be chasing right now.

Larry Kosmont returns to open the toolbox: why zoning approvals are currency a city can create, bank, and trade, how tax increment districts capture the value new development creates, and the honest math on what these tools can do for a city budget

California cities are facing their deepest budget gaps since the Great Recession. City News goes inside how cities pay for what they do: where the money comes from, how zoning and tax increment districts turn development into revenue, how grants fund what budgets cannot, and what it means for the communities that depend on it.