Based on looking at the budget and summary, you won’t be able to tell – but its true, they called me and told me on my birthday, July 20th. The official department budget request was submitted Friday. Parisi is holding his budget listening sessions tomorrow and Wednesday. That was a surprise announcement to most of us last week. The hearings will be held in Fitchburg and Sun Prairie. Please read on to see how this all unfolded to the best of my ability – given that most of what happened will be kept a secret until after the budget has passed. Actual budget cut on page 255. (I didn’t actually find it, I got it in the mail today.
BRIEF HISTORY
Tenant Resource Center was the only agency to apply for funding in 1998 to run the Housing Help Desk, a “kiosk” at the Dane County Job Center that was supposed to be part of a “one-stop shop” experience. We were the “housing” piece they added with the childcare and transportation piece to go with the jobs and W-2 (might not have been W-2 back then). Childcare and transportation seem to have disappeared over the years. but we were there, getting tons of referrals from staff and using this funding to help people in Dane County, outside the City of Madison. Including, off and on, mediation at small claims court on days when people are being evicted.
They have tried to cut our funding several times. Once early on when Falk was still there. That failed. Again 2 years ago they cut us with no warning, and if I remember right, they did it one time before that as well. Also, at one point, since we were only getting $101,000 after 15 years we had to cut our hours, but they also cut our funds back to $90,000. Then last year they tried a new approach – after 17 years of not going out to RFP – they decided to bid out our funding. And guess what.
RESULTS OF BIDDING OUT OUR FUNDING AFTER 17 YEARS
I can’t tell you I’m surprised. But they found a way to cut us. Our funding was put out to bid with funding from another agency. That other agency bid on their funding and ours. The county scored our applications and our scores were “close” I’ve been told, but their application was “more complete”. You see, we didn’t even dream of applying for the other agencies funding and no where did it indicate that we had to apply for all or nothing. Of course, since this is the first time we have done this in 17 years, this process was all new to us and I suppose we should have applied for their funding, in retrospect. Plus, it just seems terribly rude and makes no sense as we are good at what we do, they are good at what they do.
This is what I have in writing from them.
Hi there,
My apologies for the delay – I cannot release the actual evaluation materials (individual score sheets) until a contract for this RFP is finalized in November. I can, however, summarize your scores for each section.
If you have any questions, please let me know.
Your proposal received 612.90 points out of a possible 1,005 points. That score breaks down as follows:
Project Scope: 225.9 points out of 450 points
Organizational Profile: 182 points out of 350 points
Cost: 200 points out of 200 points.
Local Vendor: 5 points out of 5 points.Here is the evaluation criteria from the RFP:
Evaluation Criteria
Program Scope
(County Application, questions 1 & 2) 45%
Organizational Profile
(County Application, questions 3–6) 35%
Program Budget
(County Application, questions 7 and schedules) 20%
Local Vendor Points 0-5
Previous to this we talked on the phone and she told me the evaluators were 3 county staff, 1 city staff and 1 United Way staff. Ah, the United Way. My understanding is that our scores were close. And that they were better because they had a “complete” application, and we did not. Apparently, we can’t get any other information until the budget process is over and they sign the contract. I sure would want to see the scores.
This is the letter I wrote on July 21st.
Dear County Executive Joe Parisi
Yesterday we received the news that the county has chosen to not have TRC provide mediation, housing counseling, housing placement and search services for Dane County. I haven’t seen the scores from the RFP yet, which may be further illuminating, but I’m wondering if you would have time to meet to discuss this?
Obviously, this is devastating for us to lose 1/3 of our budget as an agency and it will require a complete restructure – which we can do. Obviously, the new vendor (whomever that is) will take on the task of providing weekly housing lists of housing that is available and they can provide the walk in services at the Job Center. And apparently, they are also going to provide housing case management services as well – I wish them luck with that, as there simply isn’t time in the day to provide those services with 1,000s of people coming through the doors each year. We serve thousands of people there. We do all of the above, and all of the below services, for only $90,000 a year, a great deal for the county. It actually costs our agency $120,000 a year or more to provide these services. We did that for 17 years with never a review of our contract. No complaints from county staff about our services. No discussions with county staff about what they would like to see us doing differently.
I can accept losing a contract to another agency, and I can accept not providing the services at another location. What I am struggling with, is, the mediation and housing counseling services to people in Dane County outside of the City of Madison.
Do you really intend for us to stop providing housing counseling services to tenants outside the City of Madison? To stop helping them get their security deposits back, helping them with getting repairs done to their units or helping them understanding the eviction process? Or what their lease says and how the law changes impact them?
Do you want us only doing mediations at eviction court for City of Madison residents only? Do you intend to have this other agency come in and have us both providing services at small claims court, us for inside the City of Madison and one agency for those outside of the City of Madison?
Was this a policy change, determining that case management for a few is preferred over the housing counseling and mediation services listed above for Dane County residents who don’t live in the City? And do you just want us to stop doing the services where there will be gaps? Or was this not thought through? Who are we to refer people to who are seeking eviction mediation services at small claims court or information about rental rights and responsibilities, because we know of no other agency in Dane County that provides these services. Are tenants who don’t live in the City of Madison, but live in Dane County just being cut off from our services?
Please contact me as soon as possible to discuss this, so we can understand your intent.
Sincerely,
Brenda K. Konkel
Executive Director
Tenant Resource Center
Parisi’s Response:
Dear Brenda,
Thank you for contacting me regarding the recently awarded contract for housing case management and stability services.
As you know, the County Board inserted a provision in the 2015 Dane County budget which directed the Department of Human Services to put out for RFP all contracts related housing services, case management housing services and housing sheltering for 2016. The RFP you reference is related to this budget provision.
Department of Human Services staff have assured me that all rules and procedures were followed and that the agency which was awarded the contract is capable of providing the services and has a long working relationship with the Department. Given this information it is unlikely that a discussion between my office and your organization would change the decision of the Department.
The RFP process is very important to ensuring that the taxpayers receive the most value for their dollar and that political motivations not cloud the selection process of our purchase of service partners. Given that, it is not appropriate for me to meet with applicants after the selection process if the discussion is for the purpose of rescinding the decision of the Department or reissuing a properly conducted RFP.
I hope this information is helpful to you. Please contact the Department of Human Services if you have any further questions or if you would like to discuss other service options that your organization can provide .
Sincerely,
Joe Parisi
Joseph T. Parisi
Lynn Green said:
Brenda –
I would be more than willing to meet. That said, I do not have any funding to pay for “other service options”. Our discussion would need to center on strategies to partner with other agencies, possible grant applications, other funding strategies, or other options that do not involve Department funding. I know that you have a thorough knowledge base of many of these options, but possibly it would be useful to brainstorm them together.
If you wish to meet to brainstorm options, please let me know what times you have available in the upcoming weeks. I will ask Casey to join us.
Lynn
I met with Lynn Green, no new ideas.
She says they don’t pay for mediation – but mediation was mentioned in the RFP. She says the other agency will do the work we are doing. I hate to sound arrogant, but what we do is highly specialized and we train the other agencies!!!! Our staff take months of supervision to be good at what they do – no other agency does this.
WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR THE TENANT RESOURCE CENTER AND ITS CLIENTS?
Confusing Services
So, we used to be able to say we serve the whole state of Wisconsin. Now we will have to say we serve City of Madison residents, UW students (regardless of where they live) and people outside of Dane County (funded by HUD). For those calling from Dane County but who don’t live in the City of Madison we have to refer them to another agency. For phone callers, this should be easy. For those using our website, I don’t know? For those who walk in, if its between 10 and 2 (or whatever hours they choose) we can send them to the other office. (Our office is open 9 – 6 on Willy St.) Realistically, this is insane. Our housing counselors have the information and could provide it to people who need it – but instead we have to make them jump through hoops. It sucks. But we can’t keep provide the same services with 2/3 the funding.
Gaps in our services
Our housing counselors currently help people with housing laws, reading leases, brainstorming solutions, and helping people find housing. If the find housing piece goes away – we’re back to making our clients jump through hoops.
Harder to be linguistically competent and culturally relate to our clients
With a smaller staff, it will be harder to make sure that we always have a person that speaks Spanish and Hmong on our staff. That is something we take great pride in, but if 2 of our 3.5 paid staff go away – well, then it would be really hard to find one person who speaks both Spanish and Hmong.
Harder to manage office tasks
We’ll have to move back to a part-time office manager. 🙁 You know how hard it is to have a part-time office manager? Who answers the phone the other half the day? The staff person will spend alot of time playing phone tag with people who call when they are not in the office. And, there is no continuity for the volunteers and staff to ask simple questions about the copier, office supplies, etc. Those questions will probably all come to me. Plus, we won’t have a Program Director, all the volunteer management tasks, grant writing and reporting will fall back to one person – and there won’t be anyone to proof read or work with. Plus, all the updating of the training materials, brochures, website etc will only have one set of eyes. And, there will only be one person for all the volunteers to ask questions when they have them, which means its incredibly difficult to get any of the afarementioned work done.
Will we survive?
Yes. When I started, we were an agency with one full-time Executive Director and a 10 hour a month bookkeeper. And lots of kick ass volunteers! 🙂 We will adapt and survive, the question is, will we be able to serve the people that we need to serve? We are barely hanging on now with the crush of people with extreme needs walking through our doors. Many peopel get info from our website, the people who come in, well, they have much higher needs than they used to.
WHAT CAN YOU DO?
Attend on of the “listening” sessions
September 1 — 5:30– 7 p.m., Fitchburg Public Library, 5530 Lacy Rd., Fitchburg.
September 2 — 5:30 – 7 p.m., Westside Community Service Building, 2598 W. Main St, Sun Prairie.
Email the county board and County Executive Joe Parisi
parisi@countyofdane.com
County_Board_Recipients@countyofdane.com
Save the date
The bigger budget listening session on Human Services will be September 16th (as far as we know)
Ask them to . . .
1. Consider not awarding all the money to one organization – fund the agencies where they have strengths. Don’t penalize one good agency for doing what they are good at.
2. Open up the process so that we can see the scores and who the other agency is that got the funding that they think will provide the same type of services as the Tenant Resource Center.
3. Be a partner in funding the Tenant Resource Center and people outside the City of Madison deserve the same good services we provide for people inside the City of Madison.
