Last night there was a joint committee meeting between the Community Development Block Grant Committee, Community Services Committee, Committee on Aging and Early Childhood Care and Education Committee. 3 of the 4 didn’t have quorum, so it was just a meeting of the Community Services Committee. They discussed the new funding process for non-profits and for the first time I saw, gave us the time line. (This explains why there were only 13 cars in the parking lot) The Committee on Aging met earlier in the day and passed the resolution.
The meeting is less than an hour, the audio is here (about 40 minutes). (I missed a bit of the beginning and sorry for the noisy start and my allergy coughing.). It’s dreadfully boring.
Jim O’Keefe talks about the how they will only be taking applications in the Aging and Crisis areas, the rest of the agencies funded by Community Services will just be asked if they want to continue. There are a few they think will not want to continue. They also may have a few agencies that want to change how they do things and they may have come proposals on that. (Hmmm, that was cryptic to me). He expects that there will be requests for additional funds from the aging and crisis groups and they may be put on the B list for the council and mayor to consider. That will then go through the 2016 budget process.
They pass the resolution, and the summaries of the Aging and Crisis funding descriptions and priorities. There is a little discussion, but its pretty limited. Most (good) questions and suggestions come from Alder Shiva Bidar. They try to explain how new projects might get funding outside of the Aging and Crisis areas, but say there might be ideas the mayor or council have that might result in additional RFPs. They use the Wanda Fullmore program as an example. They aren’t planning on cutting back in any areas and new projects would likely have new funding. The staff will be adding a list of what is currently funded to the legistar file.
The most useful part of the meeting for me was the description of the time line.
TENANTIVE Timeline
There was a lot of “I think” and hesitation on the committee dates, but the application dates seemed more certain.
– Applications for continuing and crisis and seniors published June 19 (assuming council approval)
– Continuing applications due July 10 (3 weeks)
– Adult Senior and Crisis funding applications due July 17 (4 weeks)
– July 21st consideration begins and applications will be available to committees and on the web
– Committee on Aging will meet on July 29th at 1:30 at Madison Senior Center to develop their slate of recommendations
– July 30th, special meeting of Early Childhood Care and Education Committee committee review intent to continue applications and they will make their recommendations
– Wednesday, the week of August 3, the Community Services Commission get recommendations from Committee on Aging and ECCEC and continuing contracts for those not covered by aging and ECCEC and where Crisis funds will be spent – this is when they expect to get public input.
– August 10th – Conference Committee (employment and community center continuing contracts) and Community Services Commission meet jointly to make decisions on Senior funding, crisis funding and continuing contracts (including ECCEC recommendations) plus B list recommendations for the mayor and council.
– August 14th mayor will receive recommendations
Sounds like they won’t have presentations from the agencies?
The committee chair (former alder Paul VanRooy) thinks its great they won’t have to meet so much. Staff will largely be making recommendations and they will only have 2 meetings to discuss agency funding. Some of the meetings need to be checked on for the 5th and 12th, some citizen committee members have other important things to do like softball games and they have to check their schedules, they will do a doodle schedule.
They point out again that the goals and objective statements are included in their approval. The note one change that the “eliminate waiting lists” were removed from crisis and the “capacity building” is limited to the senior coalitions.
There was no one there from the public besides me, there was no public input. They move to a vote, but then realize no one has a copy of the resolution, so there is a pause while they copy it. Shiva makes suggestions for a wording change about culturally and linguistically appropriate services since it is worded in different ways in the two documents attached to the resolution.
Bidar also asks about the “new” funding, that is only mentioned in the background to the resolution and not the whereas clauses. Sounds like they will be working on some language to address her concerns, but they don’t pass anything specific.
Seems like most of the meeting was spent scheduling and waiting for copies instead of discussing anything substantive. I think people were kinda burned out by all the focus groups and meetings they already had with FCI but it feels like little of that really made it through the process or had any impact. This was pretty anti-climactic after what I thought was the promise of a robust discussion by 4 committees. I don’t know why there was no public input except that it was a short week and I didn’t see any outreach to agencies to participate but since I’m not funded in the senior or crisis areas, maybe they only reached out to them?
Paul van Rooy is still there? Wow!