They debate their final recommendation to the county board. Details of what is “on the table” are here. They have two charts that are handed out – well, sitting on the table but you can get a supervisor to go up and grab them for you. One is for operating and one for capital – will post them in later when I’m near a scanner.
9 minutes of “debate” on the Operating Budget
They take care of other business first. The Budget debate starts at 5:39.
The motion for “sub 1” was made by Sharon Corrigan and seconded by Mary Kolar. Jeff Pertl goes through the packet, essentially reading the chart. He explains it reconciles the entire operating budget and is amendments that passed committees with some modifications to meet the levy limit.
NOTE: Besides reading the chart, no new information is provided. No public testimony is allowed, there may have been registrations on this item, but if so, they are not read. There are about 45 people in the room. No reporters that I see, except maybe one, as she had a recorder. A handful of supervisors, staff and about 10 members of the public are present. There were 78 total amendments on the operating budget. Someone (Corrigan and Pertl?) hand picked 38 of them to make it into the sub, including 4 new amendments never seen by the public with no opportunity to comment on them. There was no public discussion by the members of the committee about what would be in there and what would not. Several of the amendments have been modified (mostly reduced), but there also was no public discussion on those modifications or about how those would be modified. (A quick summary is here as well, but no details. details here. Essentially, this fell out of the sky a day or two ago, no public discussion about how things got in there, or didn’t. No public discussion about the merits of most of the amendments by Personnel and Finance, their last two meetings was public comments and questions. No debate by members. Makes one wonder, when and how did those decisions get made and by whom?
Sharon Corrigan says she won’t go into detail on the amendments but will take questions. The amendment looked at all of the amendments brought to Personnel and Finance and looked at funding the priorities that they talked about all year, one being the criminal justice workgroups. This provides funding for some of the recommendation and begins diving into some of those issues. One of the biggest items is the purchase of service COLA (cost of living increase) which makes it a .7 increase total, adding .2 in this increase, those are the core services we do as a county and they hire out for those services and we need to make sure the individuals that we hire can be successful providing those services. It also elevates the Office of Equity and Inclusion and augments it work with additional support. They have items for the environment – the climate change action planning is in here, so is the BUILD (Better Urban Infill Land Development) Planning and finally they added services for the homeless by funding the day resource center and and adding funding for the family overflow shelter and for senior services adding money where they had seen cuts during difficult budgets. In general, they added some good measures, made it stronger and funded priorities.
Jeff Pertl asks for other comments and discussion. No one says a word.
Pertl adds that as the economy recovers, we faced some challenges in past years and the employees and service agencies took the brunt of it, the service agencies went many years without an increase, it was really important that the employees got an increase for the first time in 4 years, it important that we addressed our priorities that got additional money, not enough, but a high high priority for our purcahse of service agencies for those that are taking care of the most vulnerable in our county, we are highlighting the criminal justice reform efforts, we are putting money behind that work. We are putting money behind homelessness, those are our three banner things we were working on all year. He appreciates chair Corrigan’s work on this, there was $1.6M in recommended spending by the committees and all of them were good projects, there were none of them that weren’t important, none of them that were not desperately needed to be addressed and difficult decisions had to be made in that process. There was about $500,000 in the levy, and $100,000 in savings and I think we put that in areas that reflect the values of the board and he appreciates that work.
Pertl asks if there is anyone else. No one says a word.
He calls for the vote, and the all vote yes.
5:48 it passes.
Matt Veldran stomps out of the room.
NOTE: On homelessness, they spent a grant total of $30,000 for the day center operating costs and $23,000 for Salvation Overflow, but then took $40,000 from the vouchers that they currently have for motels for families that can’t stay in the shelters (ill, autistic kid, etc) and that money will no longer be available if the Salvation Army chooses to put the money into the family overflow shelter. Over $200,000 we for the COLA increase. The rest went to the other amendments listed in the links.
Second thoughts on the Operating Budget – 28 minutes
Pertl moves on to the capital budget.
Sheila Stubbs asks when they can put forward amendments on the budget. Pertl goes back to that, he says they adopted sub 1, but asks them to take a step back. Without objection he allows Stubbs to present an amendment, no one objects. HHN 14 is for Genesis. She thanks the supervisors who worked on the budget, she wasn’t able to be there for two weeks due to an emergency death in her family, she thinks this amendment that was important to her was left out of the process. She understands they have to make critical decisions but they also have to talk about their theme, that they are addressing is racial disparities and Genesis is predominantly African American and provides services, re-entry services. The $39,500 was considered because there is an employee that will not be employed January 1st because of funding that is not going to be recieved. Genesis has been here for 10 years, this is not the first time she came before the committee asking to consider the different processes with Genesis. They haven’t always gotten it right, but they have helped us with our process on what we can do better. She thinks there is a problem with the RFP process. If we are going to talk about being fair and equitable, she thinks this is a perfect example where we need to step back and look at if we are fair, are we looking at equity. And I’m asking for support for this dollar amount, I know we say we don’t have any money, I know we need to have priorities, but we have money for what we want to have money for. We’ve gone through this process before, we could go through line by line and reduce, we could reduce the BUILD fund, we could reduce a couple lines that we have for equity and she thinks that they could provide the services for Genesis – they are the only ones providing services for African American males, in our community and we talk about mini grants and its about start up. Its ok to provide money for start up agencies, but here is an agency we know first hand if we don’t provide the dollars we are going to lose a job. We talk about being progressive and making decisions, she is not happy this amendment did not make it through the process. We talk about comparing it to Tenant Resource Center, those services are critical as well, they are two different agencies providing two different services. She wants them to talk about what happens to transition. This is important to her, if she had been here this wouldn’t have happened. It passed HHN, but then we talked about an RFP process, why are we giving a process to Genesis that we did not give to agencies last year. We provided money to Jewish Social Services, we did not RFP them. Briarpatch we gave them additional dollars to. We are beginning to compare agency to agency and those are dangerous waters to be a part of. She doesn’t like to play those game and doesn’t like that they have a different process. It’s not fair. She doesn’t believe in the efforts being done, she says they have to step back and say, are they being fair. This is an example of where we are not being fair, this is why we need the Office of Equity and Inclusion, because we have processes that are not being fair, nor equitable to any agency. There is no reason to RFP out this service. She is disappointed she has colleagues that feel different, why are they getting a different process. We need to figure out a fair process, we are not fair right now. She wants someone to explain to her why they are treating Genesis different than they are treating other services. This is based upon which supervisor is submitting which budget amendments. Supervisor Levin submitted budge amendments last session and they didn’t do RFPs for those services so why are we doing it for Genesis. She has been a partner at this table for many supervisors, she has taken many hard votes and it is not ok to tell me that people are not taking hard votes, she wants to be treated fair like the other 36 supervisors, and this is not fair, she is not pleased, she is very disappointed that this did not make it through the sub, so she needs an answer, for leadership to tell her why you think this should not be a part of the sub. She is very upset right now, so she needs an answer.
Awkward pause.
Pertl says that they have had many conversations about this and he appreciates your advocacy work in this area. He says Health and Human Needs did consider it, they forwarded it without any recommendation and their recommendation was that it go out for bid, the HHN chair is not here and he can’t speak for him. He says the challenge is that there are many priorities that need funding, you and I agree this is an important one, he knows this did participate in that process and there were technical issues in that submission. He thinks the Baker Tilly identified some challenges in our processes and the Office of Equity and Inclusion will look at some of the processes. They will look at how everyone can pursue funding. They have talked about this, the priorities are the POS piece, criminal justice piece and homelessness and a variety of other amendments did not make it through the process, he offered to work with her on this, he appreciates her passion on this and they will explore this and he thinks its a worthy area, in the end there are decisions to be made and he appreciates her feelings on the subject.
Stubbs says that her issue is, who decides this particular agency needs to be RFP’d. How did we decide that, last year we didn’t decide that. How are we deciding which agency, and African American agency should be RFP’d when we are talking about racial disparities and how we are being treated. She thinks they should call out thremselves when they are not being fair, we should not go along with a process that is not being fair. She has stood up many times and made hard decisions, and been fair to all her collegues and you all cannot tell me this is fair, its not fair. It is not fair and it is not ok for me, we should start standing up for what is fair at the county board level and we have an unfair process and its not going to work for me, we need to fix it, and its fixable because we have a county board that needs to vote overall on Monday. I expect to get this fixed and its not hard to do. You just take out provisions that shouldn’t be there. She is giving them a perfect example of how they are picking and choosing which agencies have different processes with and it is not ok. We want to be transparent, we should be transparent and we should be honest. We are not transparent and not honest and she does not want any parts of that process. She was elected to make very difficult decisions and she has been a partner at the table, she has taken critical votes and she is not going to take this one, not going to happen for her. She agrees they have had many conversations, she has talked to the chair, she appreciates their efforts, but she has pointed out this is not fair. She believe her leadership should be working with her to make it fair, she agrees there are critical decisions and not everybody got things in and she understands budget, trust me we are not all going to get what we want, but we have to make critical decisions, and I’m saying this decision is not fair, she believes if she had been here from the beginning this would not have made it this far. How do we decide who we RFP, who decides that? She talked to Chuck on the phone, is is a dollar amount, when is it sole source, if I put down $25K would we have to RFP, no. We don’t have to, so why do we decide to do that, we don’t have to RFP it out.
Pertl says in response to those two issues that was the recommendation of the HHN committee, it is not a binding rule, his understanding is that when there are multiple vendors, that can provide a service, generally we run an RFP process, Genesis competed in an RFP process, again, there was a technical issue, but the board can also but line items in the budget, is that a fair analysis Chuck?
Chuck Hicklin, the county finance guy says there are many examples that Stubbs pointed out in the 2015 budget where the county board or county executive pointed out funding for a specific agency for a specific activity. The normal process is if there is a new activity that is initiated as part of the budget, like the mental health drop in center, they did a Request for Proposal on that, there are examples both ways, if this was put in for Genesis specifically it would go to Genesis, if it was put in as a general service as re-entry transitioning, then it would be RFPd because it is over $25,000 and there are other agencies in the community that can provide that service.
Pertl says if there is no particular vendor, then it has to go to bid or the department or agency would bring forward a bid waiver and this committee provides that.
Hikclin says correct, and this is they committee that sees those from time to time.
Pertl says the simple explanation is that those are the process options, but you are correct, it is a function of how the board votes. Other folks want to speak to the amendment?
Silence.
Mary Kolar says RFPs are done, but for over $25,000 and also if there is potentially more than one service provider, that is the criteria to remain fair. To address the concerns of Stubbs about if this is fair, that is a very valid question, if not we need to. If there is a RFP process it needs to be consistent.
Pertl says he thinks the issue is if a line is not enumberated, for re-entry or mental health services, then it would have to go to bid, the $25,000 rule would be in effect and if its sole source you need a bid waiver. If the board by policy adopts a particular vendor or project, in the actual budget language, then it doesn’t go to a bid, we would designate someone in the legislative process. Either process can exist, absent a direction, it goes to bid. Other comments?
Corrigan says she agrees that these are services we need to offer, this is an important issue, but she feels that if there are multiple vendors, they should go to RFP. You raised a couple issues from last year and maybe we should have looked at that. Last year she was involved in an effort to RFP all of our homeless services because she felt that was important and she voted against a sole source contract on numerous occasions on this committee because she felt like we should go out to bid for services, she thinks its an important thing, she thinks its a fair thing and in the long run it helps equity to have an RFP process, but the Office of Equity has to look at our processes and make sure they are accessible to all organizations that could provide services and that we don’t’ create artificial structures that prevent people from being successful in the RFP process, She thinks they need to do it more, its why they have the process of having to be re-bid every 5 years to allow opportunity so we don’t get in the situation where we give preferred status to some people and others in the community who don’t get the opportunity. That is her preferred process, that we RFP things.
Stubbs is not opposed to that, she is opposed that you are using Genesis as your example. We are talking about racial disparities and equity, why is Genesis being used as the example? She is saying how and when do we decide when we apply certain rules. She agrees last year they said they should do all the homeless, but you didn’t take an example of an agency at the time and say you are going to apply it to you (um, hello). She gave the example of last year, we decided to fund Jewish Social Services, we never did a service with them before and we just decided to give them $25,000. Well, Genesis has done services with us, and now we want to decide to give them an RFP, you’re not fair. That is the bottom line, you are not fair and consistent on how you do the RFP process. And I think we should do our FRP process. We have TRC, Genesis, there is a problem. We need to figure out what the problem is and rectify the problem, we need to find out what is workable and agreeable and you are using Genesis as and example and right now we are talking racial disparities, we are talking jails, we are talking re-entry and you are going to use Genesis as an example, that is a poor example. That is her opinion, this is a very poor example to place that provision on and that is why she is advocating to the place she is, she asks if they can ask staff questions. Pertl says yes, she asks Lynn Green about the types of services they provided and is there anyone who does the exact same services they provided, we know DeeDee Watson has provided a letter on the services they provide.
Lynn Green, Director of Human Services says that Genesis has the old ?? grant and have for many years done education, early intervention at the high school level, some of you know Manny Scarborough and he is excellent at that, that is a long term program. They lost . . . well they didn’t lose an RFP, they didn’t get their proposal in on time so they were never considered for an RFP, which is different than the Tenant Resource Center, which actually lost the competition through evaluation, they were unable to look at the proposal Genesis wanted to submit because they did not get in on time, she just wanted to clarify that. There was a difference in what happened in those two. Genesis the proposal they were responding to was drug court case management which they have done for us for years and that was the one they did not get in on time. We have a long track record with them, they ran the Exodus program for many years.
Stubbs says that Green is aware that, and chair Corrigan knows, that there was a problem with the process, Genesis turned in a proposal, they did the electronic email for the RFP, it didn’t get where it should have, they used a different email address from her understanding, but they also had a hard copy and gave it to Todd Campbell, we know we have gone to Marcia McKenszie about this, they have had multiple conversations, and there is a problem with our RFP process, and I met with you, your staff, Dr. Harris, County Executive staff, on the whole process piece and how she thinks there is a problem and for staff to accept a hard copy when we are beyond a deadline date is a hard place to be because it sends a mixed message. Her question is about dollars to pay off the $39,500.Is there any place in your budget, Briarpatch for example, I know we saved them multiple times in the budget, we save Briarpatch many times when Casey has run in at the last minute with operating dollars and I believe in hommelessness for teenagers, I’m not opposed to that, but I want to talk about the process. Is there money in their line, where do we go with their budget.
Greens asks if this is the youth shelter, Stubbs says yes, it started in October, Green says that they had an annual budget in 2015 for the whole year, they started in October, so we’re running a multi-year contract for the 2015 money that starts Oct 1 and runs through September 2016, for $103.033. Stubbs asks if they start at a later date, will that be a problem. Green says they are in the 2016 budget for $103,375 with the COLA on it. Stubbs says they get two payments or one? Green says they will be getting 2 payments Jan 1 – September. Cuz there will be two budget years running concurrently. Stubbs asks if that is normal, do they do that for any other agency? Give them two payments. Green says not usually, no. Stubbs asks if she reduced money for a couple of months, they would be still getting money, but not overlapping payments. Green says they would not be getting the 2016 and 2015 payment, they would be getting one payment. Stubbs asks why we did that, why are they getting two payments. Green says that they are underfunded for 2016 and that was a way for the county to give them additional payments for 2016.
Pertl asks if the 2015 money is carryforward, Green says it is encumbered because of the 2015 contract.
Stubbs asks if she reduces their line by 4 months to come up with the $39,500 would that stop their services. Green says that is a question for Casey Behrend, they are underfuneded for 2016 and needed additional money from the county and the city and he was looking for $100,000 so he would be fully funded for 2016.
Long pause.
Stubbs says she will call Casey.
Cynda Solberg says that she is sensitive and against sole source contracts and for a long period of time we were more liberal about earmarking and granting sole sources and that has what has gotten us into trouble a couple times. There are two processes here and they seem to be crossing, they are two distinct processes. One is the budget process where we say this is our priority and this is what we want funded. The other is a RFP or bidding process where we get a vendor. When you say we are taking money away from Genesis or Tenant Resource Center or any other vendor, that is really not what we are doing or should be doing. We should be saying if we will or will not fund a program and what vendor is or is not in it should not be an issue, it should be a program not a vendor. Her recommendation is to look at the purchasing process and guidelines and what is in our ordinances regarding this and maybe we need to tighten it up, so we are not cutting a vendor, we are cutting or not cutting a program. If we did that, maybe some of the misunderstanding and fairness could be better achieved.
Pertl asks for other comments. Silence. He says there are barriers and challenges in the RFP process, Solberg also raises an issue, he did a $22M grant for the state and in their transmission process they had a delay and the federal government did not accept the application, he says that they need to be fair and consistent and we need to recognize that we have a lot of service providers at many levels and we need to make sure we are consistent and fair but we also need to have an abililty for everyone to participate. We talked about the RFP process and how Genesis was not considered, but the recommendation for Genesis is not to fund or not fund, HHN just says to forward it saying it should be bid, we can change that. But the recommendation was not to fund the program either. We can look at the options and see if we can identify some funding, we can look at that process. Its difficult to look at it in isolation tho. We have to be mindful if there are changes how those folks will be impacted and we need to reach out to them. We need to know the tradeoffs in those decisions.
And other comments. Silence.
Pertl asks if they want a vote or if want to wait and bring offset funding.
Stubbs says she will bring it to the board with offset funding, she thinks that is a fair process to bring it to the board for her colleagues that worked and put together our levy dollars, so she thinks she needs to do some work and figure out where she will find money. She needs to be fair to the Executive’s office too because she will be going there and asking if there are some areas he oversees that can be reduced. She would like it to come to the county board floor for a vote.
Pertl offers condolences and she was not able to make it to meetings because of her mother-in-law.
Pertl says without objection, having voted on it once, . . . . Hicklin interrupts and says they already have a vote on it. Pertl says without objection they will withdraw the amendment and go back to the original process.
11 minutes of debate on Capital Budget
Corrigan says its everything in the packet except P&F 6. Pertl walks through the package, a few clarifying questions are asked and they pass it.
Passes by 5:48.
