I went over 10,000 words and had to start a new file . . . Here’s the first part of night two. Here’s part one to the budget from Monday.
COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT – page 56
Jim O’Keefe says that this has been a challenging budget year, it was a valuable learning experience. Migration to Munis was extra challenging because they combined the two divisions (CDBG and Office of Community Services). They have state and federal dollars, 100s of contracts and many moving pieces. There have been some discrepancies between the presentation and the way they view things. There are some reconciliations that need to be done and they are working with finance on that and they will be able to present the adjustments next week. He also praises the finance team. And Heardy Garrison from his staff.
He says that he continues to enjoy the strong support of the mayor and council, the executive budget strengthens that. This budget contains consolidation of investments in neighborhood centers, annualizing Terresa Terrace, Meadowood Community Center lease and open one in Park Edge area. They annualize for construction employment initiative. That is $200,000 in additional spending authority. It steps up homeless services, it has funds to support the county resource center anticipated to open 4th quarter 2016 at the earliest. Until it opens there are funds for case management at library, and interim services – transportation,, laundry and storage. A street team to put in place to include members that are clinically certificated to work on AODA and mental health issues. Funds for youth employment, summer jobs and Wanda Fullmore program. There will be a diversion of EOP funds temporarily, $100,000 for a pilot project to address one or more of achievement gaps in Race to Equity and $25,000 for capacity building for needs in the summer process. $150,000 is still for EOP and they might do that once a year. This is the 3rd year of COLA increases for contracts. One area not addressed is that the senior programming and crisis program areas B list programs. They are proposals that they couldn’t fund. The Aging Committee and Community Services Committee thought those needs should be brought to their attention.
Mayor asks about the job training program, wants more detail. O’Keefe says this is a proposal that was not a supplemental, it is a proposal to support Big Step. They are involved in construction employment training, that was for women and people of color to develop skills to get into construction industry. Big Step is at the end of the process, anticipates labor needs and matches trained employees with contractors to fill the jobs.
DeMarb says that she thought we were excited about the NGOs forming a group around the first initiative to get ready for Big Step. Can you tell us where that is at, has it been successful what are the challenges and how is it going forward. Staff says it is a challenge but worth doing. This will have longer term implications, they consolidated training to make it more uniform. There will be a common curriculum and working together to place people. Getting unemployed people to apprenticeship is difficult, they are doing pre-work and getting people ready for lesser skilled construction jobs. This is the front end.
DeMarb asks if the program has been more successful – the County was funding it and now the city is too. O’Keefe says that County was for Alliant Energy Center, not broader than that.
DeMarb asks about last year’s budget and the money to lead into Big Step. She thought that was that women needed daycare, but the money was used elsewhere – for other job training programs. Her question is, is that money in the budget to help women participate. O’Keefe says the $100,000 for daycare support for construction employment or other programs. They were surprised to learn that there was not a great deal of demand. We are trying to figure that out. That money is continued in the budget, they anticipate pursuing this use.
Eskrich says this is hard to decipher – is there a way to get something with more detail with the contracts. The budget highlights are helpful. O’Keefe says this is a question for finance. Laura Larson says that this is like Engineering budget that is very complex. They are in the process of breaking down the sources of the funding. And they will show what initiatives they will be funding. They should have more info soon. O’Keefe says that behind the totals are hundreds of specific contracts. That detail exists in munis and he doesn’t know how to get to it. They are working to access those numbers. Schmiedicke says that the detail on the contracts has not been in the budget and you get it as a separate resolution after the committees allocate the money. He says that the there was an issue with child care being under fringe and they don’t know why it was that way.
Eskrich asks about neighborhood center funding – that was put on hold and they couldn’t apply for funding, how do we move forward from here. O’Keefe says that that they are still working on the funding processes, there is pent up demand for a number of agencies to speak to us about ongoing and increasing needs. The earliest that could happen is next summer.
Eskrich says that there is support for new centers but not old ones, she is thinking of one that doesn’t get any support but hasn’t been able to apply. O’Keefe says the only new funding is the obligations that have been made previously, annualizing Meadowood and Teresa Terrace. Its not an increase, just full funding and Park Edge/Park Ridge.
Rummel asks about staff capacity to do all this interesting work. They did ask for staff increases in 2015b and they got them. They have been very deliberative with the neighborhood center planning. They want that work to go beyond the plan. They need needs assessments, help with performance outcomes and that took time to get that job position, they recruited and failed to find a person to take that position. They need to reset and decide where to go with that position.
Rummel asks about monitoring all the initiatives, how many grant positions do you have? hey have 37.5 FTEs, people are taxed, they have a lot on their plate and are doing the best that they can. They could use some help and they have capacity in the budget to deliver it and now they need to get bodies on board.
Rummel says last year there was $275,000 in EOP, what is it funding, what is the process, is that at he same amount. O’Keefe says the same dollar amount is there. They funded internally some suggestions. The pilot project to test a collaborative service model targeting a neighborhood and having funds available in a collaborative way, for many of the families many agencies work with them and are not collaborative. They are trying to incentivize collaboration in working with clients. They used EOP funding for that, $100,000. In the summer process they asked what capacity building needs they had, they felt they should fund the $25,000 from EOP to meet those needs. The $125,000 reduces the $275,000 in EOP. There are two funding cycles right now, it would be $150,000 and only do it once a year. That is about workload. There are very small sums of money with underdeveloped agencies that need a lot of technical support.
Rummel asks about the homeless gap services, but in miscellaneous there is a day shelter study. They say it is a typo, it is the same footnote you saw last year.
Rummel asks why that is there and not CDBG? Schmiedicke says that was the amendment at the time. O’Keefe says it has been there since 2013. IN the last two years it was $50,000 hoping it opened in July. Transportaiton, laundry and storage are in that line? No, that amendment with those things and library case management and transportation, Briarpatch Youth Shelter – all but the last item are services needed until there is a day center. That money was put in there hoping those services will not be needed when a day center opens, they continue in a base budget and until that happens.
Rummel asks about Housing being available for the Housing First Team. What would they do differently? O’Keefe says this is for people on the streets in the downtown area. It envisions people with special skills, it is modeled on an effort Heartland Health Outreach did in Chicago, the original proposal has housing subsidies. Between the time the proposal was put forward and today, the funding outlook for HOME has changed, the program could be reduced by 95% in Washington. IN 2016 we will being having permanent supportive housing units on line. There is value in establishing connections to people living on the street, people who would be targets for housing in those units. Getting that team in place and making the connections has some value.
Rummel asks about the point in time survey and if they id where people are. O’Keefe says most of the people are people in the city, but it is supposed to be county wide. It is a single night of the year done twice a year where volunteers literally goes out and searches. Many of the people are familiar with spots, but do they contact and count every person – no one would say yes, but it is a best effort. It provides a snap shot. Erdman says they look all over the city, not just downtown. O’Keefe says that since it is not individualized – there is a general sense of where people are found She is trying to figure out if people are all downtown.
DeMarb asks about the street team, she went to a meeting with Heartland, this sort of a team to go out in front of housing first is something they highly recommend for the success of that operation. What is our investment in Rethke. O’Keefe says $1.3 or $1.4M. Dane County $950,000 and WHEDA Tax Credits.
Cheeks says he was excited about collaboration, what is that pilot project, how will you collaborate with the schools. O’Keefe says he can’t. There has been a disruption caused by staff turnover, there is a new group established but there was a delay.
I missed a whole bunch managing blog technicalities.
Cheeks asks how collaboration money related to United Way. It doesn’t is the short answer. Cheeks says that the United Way has capacity money.
Cheeks asks about how much time it would save to have one process instead of two for EOP. O’Keefe says that it will reduce it in half, obviously. He says it is hard for staff to reduce a half a million dollars of proposals into $100,000. It is a significant commitment of time, but it is a process he explains (2 staff people review all proposals, make recommendations and then it goes to committees) He says that there is a lot of technical assistance required for this funding.
Ok – I’m back – sorry for the brevity of those last exchanges.
Verveer asks about the supplemental budget requests, are they in priority order. O’Keefe says they are in priority order.
Verveer asks about for homeless issues, first the news that Dane County Human Services doesn’t expect the day center to be open until 4th quarter. O’Keefe says at best it will be October. They are waiting for engineering services.
Verveer asks if they have an RFP out there? Yes.
Verveer asks about working with the county to provide the gap funding, that is all there correct? Yes. When does that go to, how many quarters. O’Keefe says it would be for up to the point that the day center opens, it was sufficient funding in 2015 for an entire year, so that should be enough for all of 2016 if necessary. Verveer asks if the same package is still together, O’Keefe says that the city portion is there. This reflects that they will still work together on a package of services that best meet the needs.
Verveer asks if the $50,000 of miscellaneous appropriations will be used for the day resource center or could we fund it on th3 $30,000 in the supplemental. O’Keefe says the $50,000 was in anticipation of a July 21 date. The inference is that if $50,000 is half a year, then they have $100,000 for a full year. He doesn’t think $50,000 will be needed in 2016, that opens in October, so he would envision that in 2016 as in 2015 and 2104 that this is a resource that could be tapped for other related services that might crop up. In 2014 that was used for Salv Army and Porchlight to expand capacity in cold weather. In 2015 it was for the registry week initiative. The $30,000 is that he anticipated stronger support for the day center and the continuation of case management at the library, those were the two top priorities for this area. All but $30,000 of the money needed for those services was in the base budget, this was the incremental levy need, that is the supplemental. Behind the $30,000 is up to $125,000 for a resource center and $75,000 case management in the library. To the extent that a resource center is not open, those dollars could be diverted for the interim services, there was an attempt to make the money more flexible – instead of making an exact number for laundry or storage.
Mayor says that something magical has happened, the town of Roxford, Dunn, Fitchburg etc have all disappeared from Dane County, he has seen no support or request to support he day center from or to them, why is only the City of Madison supporting this? Verveer says thank you, I recall you made this point last year at this time.
Verveer asks if there is a request from Dane County for $125,000.
Mayor says he was asked the same thing, he got an email from Lynn Green indicating that it was $100,000 from City, County and United Way and he felt inadequate since he missed the formal request for more money. O’Keefe says he has the same info and no one can find the request.
Verveer asks for O’Keefe to elaborate. He says that as long as he has been here (3 years), there is has been talk of a day center and there has been an assumption that there would be a $300,000 budget. He says that is not sufficient, the up to $125,000 was connected to a more tangible, more specific budget. He doesn’t think the $300,000 figure has a strong foundation in a specific budget plan. There has been no specific request made, but in the time he has been here, the conversations around the county opening a resource center have this operating presumption that there would be a $100,000 contribution from the city. Verveer asks if that is from the $50K in our budgets. O’Keefe says no. He thinks that the talk of this preceded numbers in our budget.
Verveer asks if the library funding is full year funding. Yes.
Mayor says they can’t go to zero when the day center opens, he thinks there will still be enough people going to the library and they will not shift.
Verveer asks about the future of Hospitality House, what are the plans for that facility. O’Keefe is open to maintaining it until there is a county resource center. The county is anticipating it is one of several locations that will serve along with the library and Bethel and it will stay until it isn’t needed. Verveer asks if it will close when the day center opens. Yes. How much money do we provide. $20 – 30,000 for programming. Verveer asks if there will be funding or will it be still used. O’Keefe says it might be used at Lien Rd.
Verveer asks if the Homeless Outreach Team would be RFPd? O’Keefe was that it was initially an RFP, he hasn’t changed his thinking but he thinks they might apply for it. They provide that function in other communities? He says that they have done it elsewhere. The idea is that they get people into housing, but there is value in connecting with people on the streets and in this case, making the connections that facilitate their entry into housing is valuable too. There is a benefit even if there isn’t housing immediately available.
Verveer asks about the supplemental request on Briarpatch and DAIS. How much funding is in the base budget for Briarpatch. $65,000 for youth shelter and $35,000 for programming. So what does the supplemental do? O’Keefe says that the 2015 funding is not sufficient to operate the shelter for a full year, Briarpatch asked for funding during the summer process, this supplemental tried to make the point that city dollars are available only if they can do a full year of operations. There is a good deal of conversation about how they got funds, they want to annuallize their funds. If they can get funds from Dane County will determine if they can come up with a full year budget – city funds shouldn’t be committed unless they can open and keep open the shelter.
Verveer asks about DAIS. O’Keefe says that they give DAIS 185,000 in support. That is in the base budget. They have a new facility and we support only the shelter operation. They requested an increase from $185,000 to $415,000 and we couldn’t do that. We opted to make a request through a supplemental request. Even $100,000 is a large request, DAIS has reserve funds they can draw on for 2 to 3 years and so one of the options was to increase funding slowly over several years. He says that we paid 30% at the old shelter and the $425,000 could be at 25%.
Verveer directs them to the B list issues in the supplementals. He asks if there is concern on the part of staff about those requests. He points out that they are in the middle. O’Keefe says they wanted to speak to growing issue of homelessness and expanding youth employment, a lot of other proposals are important, and 4 vs 7 isn’t a big difference, they are comprable value or priority, don’t read too much into it.
Bidar asks about the timing of the supplementals and the committee process. O’Keefe says that the due date for supplementals was before the committee meetings. Each of the committee had statements they made. They thought the B lists were important and should be funded. They spoke to the prioritization of those items that were a little different. The aging group added $10,000 to a collaborative effort by senior centers. That was conveyed to the mayor and cc’d to the council, but it was after the supplemental requests. O’Keefe says that in the years past they have slid a bit in terms of their submissions because they can’t meet the timelines.
The B list is $15,454 for South Madison Coalition for volunteer guardianship program (previously funded by the United Way), $10,000 on RSVP and $10,000 Home Chore and something not on the list is the $10,000 addition to the collaborative proposal. The total B list form Aging is $45,500. The B list for crisis was item #10, $63,240. Three programs, Freedom Inc Family Support Sexual Assualt/Family Support, UUNIDOS Family Support and Rainbow Project early intervention.
Bidar asks about the additional DAIS money? Is that the B list? O’Keefe says Briarpatch and DAIS were part of the B list – that would be a total of $188,000. Some is in the base and proposed and some is not. $188,000 includes difference between $25,000 and $100,000 for DAIS.
Bidar wants to know more about the Homeless Street Outreach Team, she is wondering about collaboration and lack of coordination between services and the lack of getting people into housing. More people duplicating or collaborating, how does that work with Community Intervention Team. If you can get us more info on if that collaborates, duplicates or has not intersection with other programs would be good.
Bidar asks what the achievement gap pilot is. Is it a social worker, a community school collaboration? What is it. O’Keefe says it is fairly undeveloped but it tries to say that we have multiple agencies working with the same family in an uncoordinated fashion. They would like to develop a model for agencies to come together.
Phair asks something I didn’t hear – O’Keefe says it is not part of FCI recommendation but it came out of it.
Mayor says that we need coordinated entry for the 5 areas of entry, housing, childcare, transportation, etc. He says that should not be confused with placement of single individuals into Rethke into permanent housing.
Bidar says that sounds like Harambee for the $100,000, is that what this would be used for. Is it coordinated case management called achievement gap money.
Bidar is asking about 4, mayor things she is talking about 2. Confusion . . . 5.5 hours in, no one is tracking anything.
Phair says this sounds like community based case management and if that is where it is going, he and Shiva would like to work on this.
Phair asks about the employment work. O’Keefe says it is an expansion of the current effort, it would expand internship and employment opportunities for young people. Phair is asking about some details that haven’t changed.
Phair asks about Teresa Terrace and Meadowwood being funded the same. O’Keefe says yes, the same level with an adjustment for Meadowood lease.
Phair says that we ask this division to do a lot and it seems like you need some more staff to do everything we ask them to do. He says he thinks that he said this last year.
Mayor says that you will see the addition of a deputy director and Jim’s division is one of many in the large department that is short staffed and needs help and because of the large span of control will help the deputy director focus in workload and helping with management. This is a department that doesn’t have the ability that Engineering has due to their ability to use capital budget assignments to pay for staff.
McKinney says . . . I didn’t get it . . . I think she is asking for more level of detail just on the supplementals and other pieces they talked about in the highlights. She wants to understand the process where they determine who gets the money. O’Keefe says that the RFPs are all approved by the council, a resolution seeking the authority will explain the detail and then they come back to confirm the RFP.
Mayor says any items over $25,000 that is an outside contract has to go for an RFP that gets approved and then later it is approved for the contract. Mayor says there are rare exceptions if there is a continuing contract.
McKinney says the question is about the $25,000 that didn’t go through the process (Nehemiah is what she is talking about – I think it went over the mayor’s head) she wants to see who the purchase of service providers are. Mayor reiterates the process.
O’Keefe says that the easiest thing we could do is shower you will spending requests. He says they tried to identify funding sources outsdie of the levy, they pair proposals with funding sources that are consistent or appropriate. He says they tried to be fiscally responsible.
Everyone has lef the room expect Rummel, Eskrich, McKinney, DeMarb, 2 finance staff, 3 community development staff, one mayor’s aide, Natalie Erdman and Matt Mikolajewski.
McKinney asks about the YWCA transit programs, O’Keefe says that they put that in there in case they lose funding. There is a lack of clarity about if they will get that funding or not. It is unclear if they will lose their funding. They identified it as a potential need.
McKinney says that because she has been boots on the ground she knows how important the YWCA program is. She says that she was part of the street team that went to the Walmart area, Brittingham Park and places in between to do the point in time count. She wants to make sure the agencies engaged in homeless work and she wants to make sure they can be involved in funding in the future.
DeMarb asks about a list of all the agencies funded. Laura Larson says that is not available. DeMarb says that she knew the answer, that is the issue, the budget is not transparent. WE can’t keep of what RFP is approved when and how much. When we look at DAIS and Briarpatch, we don’t know its in your budget, we don’t know the categories it falls under. For us to understand that is important, we need to understand that and to get a report. Schiedicke says that in the past that wasn’t in the budget. O’Keefe says there was al ink, but they didn’t reproduce it.
Rummel says since we didn’t have a funding process we haven’t seen the lists.
DeMarb says the info not lining up is understandable at this point, but they need transparency, they would like to see the EOP stuff in writing.
DeMarb says she thinks you know what you need for employees. There are two that were not funded. A youth service position. DeMarb says she will continue to ask for programming for kids, they add to the workload and they don’t add staff, do you know how much has been added in the last few years. Do you know what kind of workload has been added. We keep asking. OKeefe hasn’t quantified it, he says its hard to complain about support, they got two positions a year ago. DeMarb says the alders think this is important and we ask for more programming and we need to ask for more resources, we need more people to do this.
Natalie Erdman says there is two positions not filled and they just approved the Zero 2016 position. She says they need to set priorities as well, so they can get some things done. Sometimes another program and staff person just adds to the swirling of the department. DeMarb says we need to understand our capacity. What is our capacity to put money towards homeless people when we have other needs.
DeMarb asks about the Homeless Housing Coordinator, what would they have done. O’Keefe says the same as the one added at the last council meeting on a limited term basis. Coordinate identification of housing units, working with landlords, knowing an inventory of units, making sure the VISPDAT by name list is being used and data is entered and maintaining integrity of the system and coordinate service providers and take responsibility for finding housing for people. To make the system functional and efficient.
DeMarb asks about the COLA, why is that funded and not other things. O’Keefe says he puts forward proposals, mayor chooses.
DeMarb asks why it was important. May says it was more important – we have exploited people in nonprofits for years and we don’t get the level of service we expect. He says he did the Park Street T study about nonprofits and one of the problems is that the best people working for nonprofits are snapped up in higher paying jobs. He was convinced something has to be done to increase the competitiveness to attract good people, we may get better services. (Wow, the mayor I like . . . there he is) He says that we could do proactive work instead of do reactive work. He says private sector jobs for youth was funded so they can reach the goal of teenagers getting jobs, they will be then fully employed – that was part, not all of it.
DeMarb thanks Jim for tying to collaborate with others. The city can’t do this by itself. She says this takes a lot of effort and there is so much going on, unless we work together, we can’t do this.
McKinney says 7:30 Monday morning she is on a poverty delegation and she is pleased to work with Jim O’keefe, she knows he has a serious commitment and she is please with the work he is doing.
Ok, its 10:45 and I think I’m giving up . . . will have to do the rest in the morning.
