Page 5 allows you to enter your own comments. Here are some comments that we consider important :

• It is not clear why the 4 listed goals were chosen, as one could certainly imagine other important goals that are consistent with what the money was allocated for. There seems to be over-emphasis on stormwater and flooding

• Even if you adopt the premise that at least two of the four goals should be required, it’s not clear that one necessarily achieves this in the most optimal way by having every individual project meet two goals. For example, there might be an infrastructure project that is excellent for goal #1, but proposes to establish habitat in a non-optimal location, while at the same time there might be a fantastic opportunity for habitat restoration and water health that only marginally addresses one of the other goals. If both projects were funded, the multiple goals would be addressed, but if each were evaluated independently, they might not score well with regard to meeting multiple goals. Projects should be chosen in an integrated way.

• The proposed evaluation scheme, in particular using “ability to implement” as a key criteria, has the potentially large flaw that it is not well defined. For example, there might be project that is technically easy to implement, but politically challenging. If projects that are politically challenging are deemed low ability to implement, that prejudices the outcome.