On April 23, 2026, at 6:00 PM, the Knoxville City Council held a workshop to review the city's grant-making process, covering eligibility, seven grant programs, federal grants, and council discretionary funds. The workshop was led by Vice Mayor Fugit and featured presentations from multiple departments. Council members discussed program details, community impact, and procedural concerns, including attendance and scoring criteria.
Good evening. It is six o'clock, and I'd like to go ahead and uh call this meeting to order of our city council workshop on the grant process. Um we will begin with um Councilman Thomas leading us in the Pledge of Allegiance. To the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God and justice for all Mr. Johnson, will you please call the roll? Councilman Adams, Councilman Debartel Laban here, Vice Mayor Fugit. Here, Councilman Grant here. Councilman Helsley, Councilman Honeycutt. Here, Councilman Lloyd here. Councilman Parker and Councilman Thomas. Eight members present, Vice Mayor. Thank you. Um as we get started tonight, I just want to um kind of talk about the purpose of the meeting while we're here and the flow of the meeting. So grant making is a large and complex and multi-department process for the city of Knoxville. And as um we've never had a workshop like this that talks about the mechanics of the grant making process. And as we are on the eve of the budget, and um this is a good time to have this, and I appreciate the administration working to pull all these people together. And last time I look about 75 slides to try to explain this process. So I will turn it over to um Cheryl Ball here in a minute, but do want to say there is a lot of information at um as we go through this. I'm sure questions will come up. Some of them may be answered in subsequent parts. So jot them down, jot your questions down if you can, and then we can um ask questions at the end if if it hasn't been answered sufficiently throughout the presentation so that we can try to make this as smooth as possible. So thank you. I'll turn it over to you, Ms. Ball. Thank you, Vice Mayor Fugit. I appreciate you all having us here tonight. We're excited to share with you a little bit about the grant making process at the City of Knoxville. This is the agenda and the key topics we're going to review tonight. Uh, eligibility of agencies, city grant making overview, individual grant making program review, federal grant program review, an overall timeline and calendar, and community improvement funds. So that is the basic format for today's workshop. And to get things kicked off, I am going to turn this over to uh Kitheren Smith with the finance department, the deputy director of finance to share with us some of the eligibility details for the organizations that would receive money from the city of Knoxville. Kitrin. Thank you, Cheryl. Excuse me. When it comes to the city's grant making, there are three governing documents that we adhere to. First being the city code, specifically division two community agency appropriation guidelines. It references eligibility requirements to receive these funds, application and reporting requirements for the recipients of these funds. The second being Tennessee Code, specifically TCA 6-54-11, and that's titled The Appropriation of Funds for Nonprofit Organizations. I'm sorry, these types of appropriations. Next funding sources. The first being city funding, and that is incorporated in the city's annual budget process. An example of that will be our community agency grants, which we'll speak to a little later today with Jennifer Searle do that. And then we have our community safety and empowerment grants with La Kenya, we'll talk more detail about. And then lastly, a current copy of a W9 form. If for any reason a nonprofit is unable to provide all of this required documentation, we do require that they obtain a fiscal sponsor, and that fiscal sponsor then provides the required documentation. And as funds are dispersed, they'll be dispersed to the fiscal sponsor for use by the awarded nonprofit. That's okay. Okay. Yeah. Restart the presentation.