The committee of urban development normal planet is now called to order.

Today is Monday April thirteen.

Chairwoman Harris.

President.

Vice Chair Picardo.

President.

Councilman Gonzals is absent.

Councilwoman Graves is also absent.

Councilwoman Marcus.

We have a form.

I want to get into class three solicitor.

Did I get it?

You did get it.

Okay.

I'll likely maintain a motion to get to the substitute A, substitution A into the records.

Move the second move by Pass Move.

Second by Council.

All in favor.

Okay.

At this moment, I'm going to turn it over to our new problem.

And you both can introduce yourself.

Interact and good evening, Emily Friedman, Director of Housing and Human Services.

Good evening, Alyssa McDermott, Director of Housing and Community Development Division.

Thank you.

Thank you both for being here.

And what you are doing today is giving us an overview of this receipt on a leader.

Yes.

Okay.

All right.

So thank you for making that substitution.

I'll let Alyssa set the stage for the process to come from here and give you a brief overview of what you're looking at.

All right.

So Director Friedman and I are pleased to join you this evening to present our proposed HUD entitlement grant on behalf of Mayor Smiley.

Tonight we're going to go through an overview of the process, the method methodology on considerations when we were crafting this budget.

And then we're also going to outline some next steps to advance the budget to enable the release of funds from HUD.

So this budget will serve as our second investment under the 2025 to 2029 consolidated plan.

The five-year COM plan was informed by community engagement, a detailed market analysis market and needs analysis, and a review of the access and barriers to fair housing.

After establishing community needs, we were then charged with by HUD with responsibility to select the highest quality services meeting those priority community needs at the best price.

Following our consistent cycle, we released a NOFA or a notice of funding availability in February, where we received almost 100 worthwhile proposals.

Of course, incredibly difficult decisions were had to be made due to the tremendous level of ASP and the limited availability of our funding.

We received in total 17.5 million dollars in requests with 12.5 million in CDBG requests alone.

Our job this year and our outlook for local nonprofits is particularly challenging right now as we navigate federal funding landscapes that continue to consistently change.

And with that in mind, the mayor and staff identified for funding those services and activities which ensure basic urgent needs like food and child care, homelessness prevention and response, and refugee services are able to sustain their operations and baseline service delivery.

Facility and housing proposals recommended are those that address critical operational barriers or concerns, such as fire safety systems or ADA improvements.

And we are also hoping to generate new units that serve our lowest income.

Our emphasis still continues to be placed on clearly defined projects that are ready to proceed.

To be funded, there must be a direct line between CDBG investment and eligible clients that are being served.

Direct service provision to low to moderate income clients and spaces improved must serve low to moderate income clients.

So for example, we are not able to fund general nonprofit capacity building, no administrative offices, no maintenance, and things like that.

And every activity must clearly meet a national objective and be eligible under HUD regulations.

So next I'll kind of just detail our outreach process.

So we sent a digital notice via our listserv that included the due dates, the link to register for our webinar, and uh the link to the NOFA as well.

On this lister, there are about 1400 emails, and that includes um lots of local nonprofits and um all as well as all the council email accounts as well.

We did post on the city's website, uh community relations, and we uh put information available in mayor's newsletters as well.

We also put an ad in the Providence Journal, um letting everyone know that the NOFO is available.

We did hold an application workshop to allow individuals to ask some questions and get answers.

Um that was done in early February.

It was recorded and posted online on the city's website, and we did have more than 80 uh registrants.

The city has a well-established web-based application system for its competitive polls of CDBG funding, which will send automatic reminders and email reminders to complete draft and submit.

Prior to rating our applications, HUD requires that we identify a minimum scoring threshold that applicants must meet before conducting further comparative analysis.

Risk analysis of all potential subgrantees is also required by HUD.

So some next steps.

So this enables us to develop the sub-A budget that you see before you that reflects the actual allocations rather than having to use projections and include contingency provisions.

The shared goal of this committee process is to work collaboratively to get a budget into our final form, pass the budget twice, and then the budget will be incorporated into a final larger annual action plan to be put out for federally prescribed 30-day public comment period and submit and then submitted to HUD for approval.

The need to endeavor to have these steps completed and HUD approvals in place by July 1st to avoid any disruptions in service or funding delays.

So when looking at the budget, we can see that we have an allocation and a new cash rebalance.

Those are either from projects that either failed to move forward or any projects that had come in under budget, program income that we receive from our various uh home repair loans, and any use change couch change in the cushions.

This adds to our funds so that we can program it to activities, but it does not increase any of the caps that are prescribed by HUD.

There are some fixed expenses such as the applicable percent of admin and delivery costs, which is set by OMB as allowable, to administer, monitor, oversee, and deliver program in compliance with the HUD federal regulations.

There is a public service cap.

The percentage grantees can expend on public service is capped by HUD regulations, and both the community centers and public services will fall under this cap.

And the sum of the first two buckets is about just over a million dollars.

There's an economic development section, which is a lot of technical assistance programs and investments to serve low to moderate microbusinesses or small businesses with a goal of job creation and retention.

We also provide lending to businesses through the revolving loan fund at Providence Business Loan Fund.

There is no cap no cap on the economic development category.

And then we also have some public facilities.

These are nonprofit or city owned facilities that are open and available to the public.

They must serve low to moderate income clientele or be open to an LMA neighborhood.

These are things such as libraries, playgrounds, shelters, community centers, facilities serving the disabled and rep centers as well.

And there is no cap on that category either.

And then next we have our ward allocations, which are funds made available to identify an eligible birth and mortar projects within each ward.

Prior to passage out of this committee, we will need to identify any of the all the ward projects.

And we can also offer any suggestions as well if anyone is looking for any.

This is for shelter operations, rapid rehousing, and essential services.

Our ESG funds are deployed through the consolidated homeless fund consortium.

This enables a one-stop application process and it allows us to meet the 100% non-federal match requirements and foster a continuum of shelter services.

And then we have our HOPA funding, our housing opportunities for persons with AIDS in the amount of 1.5 million for supportive services, tenant-based rental assistance, and project-based housing for persons living with HIV and AIDS in the Providence MSA.

This MSA area does include Bristol County.

So we continue to work collaborative collaboratively with council to boost program impact and efficiency, such as prioritizing transformal place based projects that improve the quality of life or service impact and underserved areas.

We also must keep in mind any parallel funding opportunities, such as city budget grants, opioid settlement funds, and etc.

When crafting our investment strategy to maximize leverage, maximize leverage, allocate resources efficiently, and ensure key priorities are met.

So our goal again is to work together to ensure that we have a complete budget with eligible activities, ready to proceed projects, incorporate it into our action plan for HUD approval, and pass out this out by the five gate docket deadline for May and June council passages to meet our submission deadlines.

So historically, we have uh unfortunately the federal government has not had great success in passing a timely budget.

As you know, we end up in continuing resolutions, we end up in government shutdowns, and that has been par for the course for the last few years.

And so what we had developed was a projected historically projected budget with a contingency or program provision so that we could then adjust the budget later when the actuals actually came in from the federal government.

This year we're pleased that for the first time in a long time we actually got it at the ideal time, which is you know, before we had commenced the committee process.

So we were able to adjust um and shift to actuals.

We unfortunately did other not unexpected, uh, experience a small cut from last year.

We knew that was likely to happen.

Our projected budget had been based on a slightly deeper cut, so it feels like good news, it's not actually good news, but it feels like good news because we were being too conservative.

So our actual allocation though, we were expecting about five million, it's actually 5.2.

So it gave us a little bit of money that we were able to uh right size the uh administrative recalculate our administrative caps.

We were able to in some places add projects where there was some limited capacity to do so.

Um so we only we were able to add one single project.

Um in speaking with council staff, it requires the NASPETucket River watershed, um, the Moreno Park and three-way accessibility project.

There's an interest in uh seeing that funded and potential willingness to collaborate and full funds to boost impact there.

So that was effectively the project that we identified that would make sense to add.

Thank you.

Is there anything we wanted with license in cover here?

Which was uh with in terms of community centers, we looked to try to sustain funding uh for those are at or close to level under public services, as Alyssa mentioned.

Uh we really were looking to expand or backstop those agencies that are really being destabilized by federal actions right now because we know that these are working with our most vulnerable frontline populations.

Um, so you'll see some uh level or increased funding for things like uh health clinics for the uninsured, services for refugees and immigrants, um, basic cultural culturally appropriate food, uh, because we experienced serious SNAP disruption during the last government shutdown.

And so, in terms of public services, what you're really seeing here are an effort to sustain those really sort of frontline organizations that are facing very uncertain uh budgets in the coming coming years.

Any questions we could um see device chair?

Um question uh obviously adjustment and additional money um with any other limitations we decided that we just conducted that ones added or could have been other unfortunately no.

Um we're really not able to have a meaningful amount to uh add any additional um the other higher scoring applications and public facilities, for example.

Uh you know, we would have been doing partial funding, and WNESCO Tucket seemed to be the only one that really had had a coherent plan to be able to fund it at a reduced level bank match with council dollars and other places that other grant funding that's available for that project.

That were lingering out there just in case we got more money that they could have been added.

So the community libraries, for example, province housing authority, all of those were very well scoring the applications.

Thank you very much.

So they belong to those who do go in.

They don't get the little money.

They do receive a capital fund as well as uh the leasing dollars, obviously for section eight and project-based vouchers.

Um I think it's well known that public housing is um direly underfunded.

Uh their capital budget is not adequate to cover uh the basic maintenance needs of public housing, let alone uh when they apply to us, it's usually for amenities or improvements that are not sort of basic capital repairs.

They're looking at really sort of increasing quality of life for residents.

So these are things like split splash pads and playgrounds, and these were border replacement.

200,000.

Yes, this is one uh that is a critical repair need that they uh is not currently budgeted in the capital plan.

People, these are maintenance issue.

Are we allowed to give money to maintenance?

Like we replaced borders and so a wholesale HVAC replacement will qualify for CDBG, it's like considered a major structural system.

Because I don't see either like what about the food banks?

Are we doing something with good banks or food bansly?

Uh we are funding them under public service.

Um, I don't see as Calavini Center.

Uh 300 uh say that against the Calavini Center.

Does they have to apply or they did not apply?

And they I don't know, maybe they didn't know they really are in need.

We'd certainly encourage them in the future.

I believe that serve.

I we did not see them apply or attend the workshop.

Um so certainly in the future, if if you have a good contact there, we're happy to ensure that they apply in the future.

One buff release they didn't want to play in one, like the McCunnel will say like the next uh no, if if someone did not apply, we we can't award a private nonprofit outside of a procurement process.

Um thank you for my second.

Um I didn't have any, which is like uh sarcastic comment uh as it's a it's like they're random lottery.

You can't win a display.

Yeah, they don't do it.

We can't be good at this.

And this is probably one of the most thorough processes that I didn't um I joined this uh this committee road committee when we very began in 2015, and it has changed over the years of how they go over and overboard to reach out to people who are not you know who are not aware of the process and that especially the council people, especially council people we recommend, so they do a thorough job of working directly with organizations, and um I never remembered us really going as far as the newspapers and all of that.

I mean, your list that you were writing down, I couldn't keep up with the outreach.

And I think uh you've done a wonderful job of doing that, you know, the outreach part and making sure we can go ahead and table.

I think we'd agree to deal with us council well council next budget.

Um to you know, probably uh encourage organizations that you know that are strongly like House of Barbara's.

Um right now we're gonna hear from if nobody has any more questions for our hearing from Carl the Oh God's every year I like him to encourage us to do our projects.

I think we'd agree to with us council well council getting the next budget um to you know probably uh encourage organizations that you know that are strong and like council baris and uh right now we're gonna hear from if nobody has any more questions for our here from Carlville God is every year I'd like for him to encourage us to do our projects thank you chairman go after one second um so I um yeah I've been doing our reach the uh the council office that's between uh myself and Rob has been doing outreach to the uh the council at large to identify these projects and the ward funds um we've been pretty uh early this year so we're in a good place where we're a little over two thirds that are uh confirmed we did submit a list to HHS but some placeholders for some um counselors who are still uh working through it um so we have about four councils out there that we're still working on um but for the most part we have a majority of the council identified here so um again I want to thank Rob for his hours did a great job to get those identified um we're working on getting the last few screen good screen did I put my proxy manager I always have to ask the question so we have a chairwoman I don't worry you're gonna choose it you'll be on me because yeah we're still yeah okay this is great um what we wanted to do tonight was just an introduction because you guys need to dig deeper into this budget itself you know dig deeper or whatever um to figure out whether this is okay because yes councilman would say it used to belong to the mayor but now it is our budget to work on that that we are looking at this budget and trying to be as fair as possible I um councilman um vice chairman and I have been able to work through some of these things but however we do have you guys the other part of the committee and then we do have the council people so it's not closed out just yet we hope that we don't get any difficult things that we have to try to make you know move things around make things other things happen but it has happened in the past we've been able to do that so um this tonight is for you to have this is your introduction to look at it think through it and uh we're over there we will have people that's gonna attend to um speak to the committee about their projects and you know probably try to advocate on their own behalf why their project is so important and why we should be funding it and so that's good for us because we learn more about our neighbors in our community and people that we are funding and serving through this process so that's a good problem so if there is no further business before this body we would like to continue so I would entertain a motion to continue in this process.

So motion we made by Vice Chairman second by council bottles all in favor all right all right motion to adjourn motion to adjourn motion to adjourn motion to adjourn second council all in favor aye yeah we're not bringing that thing hey I think to give George one time