The City Council held a study session on July 14, 2025, at 3:30 p.m. to receive updates on the Community Building Fund, the Equity in Built Environment program, the disposition of city-owned real estate, and the Comprehensive Surface Water Management Plan. The meeting also included a preview of the upcoming study session schedule. No formal votes were taken; the session was for discussion and feedback.
I'm up here today, but other team of the project, as well as building 2024 that worked closer together. So I'm going to remain for this learning. The construction of the community building fund was established because of some funding that was coming forward due to the distribution of the diversity council. And the diversity council spent many years working to support community organizations, community members, particularly with the effort of improving social equity across the community. And when we had this opportunity, the idea came forward to say how could we have community members who have great ideas, who are innovative, who better understand the barriers that they might be facing, to come up with ideas that they would want to utilize across the city and different organizations to better serve the community, maybe build the community that they live in. What I found interesting at the very beginning when we're doing the research on this was we had lots of individuals, grassroots organizations, community members who did a lot of this work on their own and looked for funding in various ways, whether it was mini grants, but a big barrier for a lot of them was if they were not registered as a 501c3 or nonprofit organization, they were not able to access a lot of funding. So this provided an opportunity for individuals, grass organizations to be able to access that kind of funding. The goal for the fund itself was to bring these ideas to life, or at least to support them, maybe to grow, or to try something out for the first time. But it also placed us in a really unique position to understand and hear from community members, whether that was dreams, aspirations, barriers that they were facing, and provide an opportunity for ongoing engagement in a way that we hadn't had before. So the total allotment for 2025 was 100,000. Seems like a lot of funding, but went by fairly quickly. When will this be completed? And would you be willing to provide us a report at the end of it to show how successful or maybe how not successful it was and what did you learn from it? For the large grant, that was a little more extensive when that was introduced. We had to do some additional paperwork and forms. It included way more. They had to submit a project scope, timeline, detailed budget, success metrics, etc. And they also had to meet with the city team for some additional questions before their grant would be approved. If you looked at the website, there was a link to it on the community building fund page. We made sure that the application process was detailed, including the rubric that we were using to evaluate it. So as people applied, they're able to reflect on that and know how that is going to be evaluated. We also included frequently asked questions so people could see. Absolutely. So anyone 15 years old and above could apply for a grant as long as they had a mentor or sponsor along with them who was over the age of 18. If they needed assistance with the application process that was offered, so whether it was a language barrier, technology barrier, et cetera, one of the people within the team was able to assist people with that application process. So the goal being anyone that wanted to apply or needed to apply would be able to do so. So going forward to see how many of those were approved. So in 2025, we had a total of 18 grants that were approved of the land grants, which means those that were $5,000 or above, we had four of those that are detailed up there, and then 14 of the small grants that varied in amount. So I would note, as is detailed in the report, that people were not always awarded the total amount that they applied for. So sometimes somebody may have applied for $5,000, and as the team reviewed it and looking at other sponsorships or scholarships they may have received, we might give them a reduced amount. We were thinking about the budget that we have, how far we wanted it to be able to go, whether or not this is an idea that was supported by other organizations to ensure that our funding could stretch as far as possible when it came to awarding these grants. You'll also notice that they vary in structure. Some of them are for events, some of them are for ongoing work, some of them were for murals. For example, the John Marshall mural that was put up, and some of them were to support like a global farmers market, which I'll talk about in a little bit. Some of the highest reflections and learnings from having the community building fund include that we have a really engaged and socially conscious community. People are interested in building the type of community they want to live in. They're innovative, they're creative, and sometimes they just need a little bit of support. We've received applications that were asking for $600, right? We've received applications that were asking for $5,000 or $20,000. So the amounts vary greatly, but a little bit of funding can go a long way in supporting something that is a great idea. And one of the things that I think we learned from, and I don't know if you felt the same way as you read through these reports, is just the varied ways that people define barriers and problems within our community, but also the innovations that they've come up with to solve those on their own, which is what we would hope for. We want community members to feel civically engaged, but for them to have ideas that they bring forth themselves. We use a rubric to ensure that we are as consistent and equitable as possible. Each person on the review team scores the application separately on their own, and then we get together every Tuesday morning and have a conversation and look at the scoring guide and say, why did you score this at a 10? Well, somebody else scored it at a 15, and where can we meet? Should we approve this application? Yes or no? And if so, for what amount? If we're not agreeing on approving it, what is the reason that we would provide? Um, there were some questions about you know, what are some grant applications that were not approved?