Good afternoon.

The time is now 2 01 p.m.

on Wednesday, October 15th, 2025 in the City of San Antonio.

B session is called to order.

Madam Clerk, please call roll.

Councilmember Corr.

Councilmember Mickey Rodriguez.

Councilmember Via Gran.

Councilmember Mungea.

Councilmember Castillo.

Councilmember Galván.

Councilmember Alvarete Gabito.

Here.

Councilmember Mesa Gonzalez.

Councilmember Spears.

Here.

Councilmember White.

Mayor Jones.

Here.

Mayor, we have quorum.

Great.

Thank you, Madam Clerk.

Okay, so we've got two items today that are interconnected.

One, um, Melody and the team are going to brief on human services consolidated funding process, briefing and pre-solicitation process.

And then we'll go into the framework, the initial framework for a federal grants tabletop exercise.

As we as we are headed into a very challenging fiscal environment and begin to see the impacts of some of these federal cuts in our community.

We have to be thoughtful about one who is already experiencing some of these.

Many of you may have uh woken up to the same headline I did this morning where uh Meals on Wheels in our community unfortunately is lost out on on that funding.

Um, and we're already beginning to see um, but then actually you also see the importance of of what could not happen.

Just this morning, I was uh thankful to be able to attend the ribbon cutting for an opportunity home.

Um these were 11 homes on the West Side uh District 5, in fact, uh, and these were homes that people were able to buy.

And that was a program that was only possible because of federal grants.

So it's not only the the cuts that we will see on on meal programs, etc.

Um, as well as cut social security, Medicare, Medicaid, chips, SNAP, but also the opportunities that will not be able to be realized if these other federal grants go away, uh, whether it comes to home equity, the ability to have home equity and and so many other things.

So I'm really looking forward to to the discussion here.

And this is designed to help us do two things.

One, under help us understand um where we might have resources that could be used to help fill the gap that we know is is um is very likely to come when it comes to Melody's budget, for example.

Um the framework for the federal grants tabletop exercise, I think will also help us see um see ourselves better.

Let me just let me say that.

I was, and I've you've heard me say this, but I was um surprised in the course of our budget discussions that we did not have the the same level of fidelity and analysis, staffing analysis in particular, um, as we did when it came to our um SAPD officers.

And that was a very useful exercise and and something that folks were able to routinely point to and say, hey, hey, hey, we did this analysis, right?

We committed to this, and now we're not doing it.

Um it would be very helpful, I think, for us to have that same level of analysis in other places.

So we know 50% of Metro Health's funding, for example, comes from federal grants.

And if in the course of the the tabletop exercise, it becomes quite clear what the consequences might be for our community as a result of that money going away.

Uh, we could then say, actually, if that money goes away, we as a council are still committed to providing those services.

Eric then will provide us with a price tag, and that will be our analysis as we go into the FY27 budget about hey, we've got this analysis on police officers.

Oh, by the way, we now also have this analysis analysis on public health services, X, Y, and Z.

And similarly, if we wanted to look at um uh grants when it comes to uh affordable housing or or anything from HUD, that will help us also look at how we might provide those services if we were still committed to doing that.

So that's the intent of the exercise.

We're not going to be able to have all the answers to this, but what we can do in the course of these, and what these are all have always helped me do is under is help to reduce the uncertainty, right?

Let's identify the assumptions that we're making, but then also help us understand the severity of some of these things, if some of our county partners, but also some of our community partners may similarly be experiencing cuts to their own budgets.

And then we have the very difficult conversation of okay, what do we stop doing?

What may we potentially have to stop doing as a result of these cuts and how quickly then can we help communicate and manage the expectations of those in our community, many of whom are the most vulnerable that would be impacted as a result of the changes either at the federal level or in the changes in our own city budget to cover that gap.

So I wanted to lay that kind of before the the council as we kind of get our mind right into these two pretty pretty meaty topics.

Um with that, Eric, if you have any um comments or you'd like us to get go ahead and get started.

Sure, Mayor, just a couple of issues.

Um is just a little bit of a reminder about the first topic on uh delegate agencies and the consolidated funding process.

Um, and we've we've we've gone through a delegate agency process since uh the late 70s and have adjusted it over time to meet the needs of of the community.

Um, and and I want to I want to um share with the council that um it'll be a reminder for some of you.

Last March we had a B session to discuss council priorities and input on an upcoming uh solicitation around delegate agencies, and there was a variety of conversation and and what would uh but but nothing clear and what became clear to me, and then subsequently reported to the prior council was that we were not going to enter that solicitation.

We were going to do something interim for fiscal year 26, and then wait for the mayor and the council for the new term to weigh in on this because this these are multi-year conversations that we have.

Um, so in the adopted budget this year, um, and you'll remember the budget work sessions that that we had uh in MELS specifically, where we awarded dated um uh the the designated services, 12 months worth of funding, and um competitively awarded contracts for eight months of funding.

And the the adopted budget has funds set aside for the last four months of the year.

We made some we dipped into that a little bit as in terms of amendments at the very end of the adopted budget with the intent that we would have this conversation, get input from you all, and go through that solicitation process um and bring it back to you for contract uh later on in the year.

I'm sorry, in 2026.

And so this is the that we're back to today's conversation, and uh some of the slides will look similar.

We've made some adjustments based on your feedback at the budget work session, and uh looking forward to your your comments and and feedback so we we can plan appropriately going forward.

So I'm gonna turn it over to Mel to go through the presentation.

Sure.

Thank you.

And so good afternoon, Mayor and Council.

And I'm here today to provide an update on the human services consolidated funding process, and to gather your input on funding priorities and policy revisions.

This process includes investments that support both human services and the homeless strategy and services department programs and initiatives.

Uh, before I get started, we do have um the nonprofit council representatives with us over here, Scott McKenich, and as well as the Kronkowski Foundation is here, and a number of our nonprofit partners.

And so this afternoon, I'll provide some quick history on the funding process, a summary of the fiscal year 26 budget for consolidated funding, and I will review the proposed budget funding priorities and policy options for your input, as well as our proposed timeline and next steps, and then I'll end with a pre-solicitation briefing for high profile contracts.

So the biannual consolidated funding process was uh first implemented in 2005.

We combined general and grant funding sources as well as multiple annual requests for proposal processes into one community-based social services investment tool through city council, stakeholder and community input.

The process has evolved to include deeper community engagement, coordination with community funders, greater alignment with city programs and priorities, and a focus on equity by investing our limited resources to serve vulnerable population in areas of high needs.

This was the foundation of the process that was examined through a comprehensive budget review of the Human Services Department.

It was completed in coordination with the Office of Innovation and the Management and Budget Department and DHS.

Policy recommendations that I will go over shortly with you build on city council input from the 2026 human services budget work session as well as CBR recommendations.

The fiscal year 2026 adopted budget includes 24.5 million to the consolidated funding pool.

This includes about 20 million awarded to 80 different delegate agency programs and 17.2 million in general fund, 3 million is from state and federal grants.

4.26 million was set aside during the budget process to be competitively awarded through a new RFP cycle with a contract term that would begin June the 1st of 2026.

Awards include 10.28 million, which is about 42% of the consolidated funding pool, to nine designated programs with 12-month contracts.

And about 10 million dollars went to extend competitive competitively awarded programs for eight months while we implemented this new process.

So this chart reflects the budget by priorities and strategies supporting children and youth success, that's 31% of the budget, including child this includes child abuse prevention and intervention strategies out of school time programs and at-risk and opportunity youths.

Strengthening families includes supports for domestic violence intervention and prevention, financial counseling, and a new strategy to support the integrated community safety offices deterrence initiative from violence.

This is about 9% of the total pool.

Senior independence represents about 10% of the funding priority and provides the activities and programs in our comprehensive senior centers.

And then ending homelessness strategies, that's about 50% of the funding pool, includes shelter operations, street outreach, and rapid rehousing, as well as other strategies.

These priorities and strategies directly align with the work of both Human Services Department and the Homeless Services, Homeless Strategy and Services Department.

And we are recommending that these priorities and allocation percentages remain the same for the new cycle.

If council wishes to make changes, this is the opportunity.

Largely based on recommendations from the comprehensive budget review, we did focus on updating the process to improve transparency, reduce complexity, and ensure support for city programs and priorities through four primary pillars.

First, we assess currently funded designated and competitive investments to understand whether they extend the reach of city departments, serve as a primary referral for the city program, or do they broadly align with a funding priority but are not tied to a specific city program.

And we assess the impact to city priorities if funding was reduced or discontinued.

Based on this review, we are recommending further categorizing funding into a central and discretionary services.

We are also broadening our engagement strategies to build existing community feedback into the process, such as the city budget survey results, community input that's gathered through planning and engagement efforts with other funding as well as our departments, expanding our collaboration with the nonprofit council, and gathering more feedback from funded agencies to improve our contract solicitation, negotiation, execution, and monitoring processes.

We will also publish a policy document next month that provides advanced information on the funding process, the priorities and the requirements for input to allow agencies additional time to prepare.

And importantly, strengthen our internal alignment and our alignment with other local funders who share similar priorities.

We do this to standardize performance metrics along funding priorities and across funders where possible, reducing the number of metrics collected, capturing the data that we need to determine program outcomes while reducing the reporting burden for agencies and monitoring staff.

Lastly, we are proposing a four-year competitive RFP cycle and increasing the minimum funding amount for awards from 50,000 to 100,000.

And that will help agencies with longer term planning, performance evaluation, and reduce administrative workload for agency and city staff.

For context, reducing the minimum or increasing the minimum threshold would impact if we did that today, would impact about 20 currently funded programs.

As a key part of our move to greater community and public transparency on the funding process, we want to further define our categories, funding categories since they do impact funding availability.

First, we are recommending clearly separating designated and competitive funding processes.

Designated funding would be awarded only to essential services that are critical to city service delivery, and where the nonprofit is the only local provider able to provide the service.

Discretionary services such as a partnership would apply through the competitive funding process.

Competitive funding would be awarded through a four-year RFP cycle.

And for year one, City Council would approve 16-month contracts for the term June 1st, 2026 through September 30th, 2027.

Contracts would be renewed annually based on funding availability and also based on the agency's performance for up to three additional years in that scenario.

The second action further breaks down funding into two service categories, both designated and competitive funding for essential services directly supports our programs and lines of work.

However, essential services participate in the competitive process when there are multiple agencies working in the same space.

Discretionary funding does not directly support a core human services or homeless services program, nor does it impact or impact established service levels or performance goals.

These funds are awarded to worthy and important community programs, but do not directly impact our city programs.

This chart provides additional detail on how those programs are aligned with the funding types.

As mentioned, nine designated programs totaling over 10 million dollars, receive 12 months contracts.

Eight of the programs provide essential services that support our operations.

That includes five school districts providing after-school challenge, Haven for Hope campus operations, two Center for Health Care Services Programs, the Restoration Center, Sobering Unit, and Minor Medical Services for Indivals in Police Custody, and integrated behavior treatment program at the Haven for Hope campus.

And then based on council feedback during the 26th budget work session in August, family violence prevention services, battered women's and children's shelter, and their community-based counseling on the Haven for Hope campus are designated.

The UP partnership received designated funding over the last two cycles to support community-wide youth program data and performance analysis.

These services are not tied to specific city programs, and we recommend they participate in the competitive funding process for future awards.

So currently they would be funded through 2026.

Receive the eight-month contract extensions.

And 28 agencies receive discretionary funding to provide an array of important services to vulnerable children, youth, families, and individuals experiencing homelessness across the community.

To summarize, today we are requesting council input on six policy actions to shape the consolidated funding process and the upcoming competitive RFP process.

We recommend continue allocation of funding using current funding priorities and allocation percentages, extending the competitive solicitation cycle from the current two to four years.

And again, contracts would be renewed annually through the adopted budget process and based on performance and funding availability.

Separation of designated and competitive funding processes, and then identifying further essential and discretionary services.

Increasing the minimum funding award from 50,000 to 100,000 to help agencies deepen their work and scale and better reflect the administrative requirements that are associated with receiving funding.

To provide context, again, 20 of those programs would receive less than 100 who currently receive less than 100,000.

And so in reality, the program would reduce the number of programs that are funded.

And then lastly, we are recommending for your consideration that we continue to provide an administrative allowable rate of 20% and agency match requirements to stay the same, continue to be implemented.

So, in terms of the timeline for the competitive funding process, in November, we will hold engagement sessions with funded nonprofits, local funders, including United Way, Area Foundation, Kronkowski, and the County, as well as the nonprofit council, and other interested stakeholders.

We do this to provide updates on council policy direction that we receive today into the funding process, as well as introducing potential applicants to our new performance measure model.

We are planning to issue a request for proposals by December 1st, and these applications would be due by January the 26th, about seven weeks, given that the holidays are right in the middle of that.

Following the evaluation process, city staff will make funding recommendations to mayor and city council for consideration on May the 8th, and contracts would start June 1st for the for year one.

Contract and renewal again would be approved each year based on performance and funding availability.

And we would begin preparing if we go with the four years.

We would begin preparing for the new funding cycle in November 2029 for which is fiscal year 30 with council priority setting, RFP release in December, and City of Council approval of contracts in May of 2030.

So council, your input will be used to finalize the consolidated funding priorities, the term of the RFP cycle, competitive funding process, and administrative policies, including minimum funding awards and agency match requirements.

We will hold a series of conversations with nonprofits, and additionally, we are asking the nonprofit council to review and provide input on the RFP document, contract, and participate in our evaluation process from a nonprofit lens to help us reduce the complexity and burden for potential applicants.

And so quickly, I will move to a review of the solicitation process for high profile contracting.

What happened?

Oh, I'm sorry.

So next slide.

Okay.

All right.

So on release, the RFP will be available and advertised through a variety of sources, including TVSA, Building Opportunities website, the Express News and other media outlets, and 163 currently registered city vendors.

Once the RFB closes on January the 26th, the finance and audit departments will conduct the minimum requirements review, and an estimated 10 evaluation panels will meet to score qualified proposals with voting members that include City of San Antonio board and commission members, individuals with lived experience, community funders, and nonprofit council representatives, subject matter experts, and staff from relevant departments, or I guess I should say related departments.

We will remind agencies to ensure that key members of their staff and board do not make campaign contributions during the prohibited period, which will begin December 15th of 2025 and end 31 days after May 8th, 2026.

We will also remind them that they are prohibited from contacting city officials regarding their proposals from January 26th, the day of submission to the when the agenda posts for the May 8th, 2026 A session.

Closed date will be eligible to be considered for funding.

Scoring will be based on a hundred point scale with 25 for experience, background, and qualifications, 40 points for the proposed program, which includes a performance scorecard, 25 points for the soundness of the budget that's submitted, and 10 points for the local preference program if it's applicable.

Audited financial statements are required, and SIBA will be waived, and the veteran owned preference program is not applicable to this process.

We are pending grantor confirmation regarding the application of local preference program to this process, which may impact the scoring criteria.

So this concludes my formal presentation.

I am happy to answer any questions you might have.

Mark Carmona, director of homeless strategy and services department, is also available to answer questions about homelessness services.

Thank you, Melody.

Very helpful.

A couple of uh a couple of items to confirm.

Um slide four, just a level set here of this budget, roughly five million is from federal grants.

Is that correct?

Yes.

Okay.

Five million from federal grants and the discretionary number on slide eight in that bottom right hand, five million dollars there as well.

Right?

Discretionary is about five million dollars, yes.

And so to confirm for again, as we are constantly thinking about how we close that that budget gap in in 27, if we needed to, um, we may be able to use this discretionary money to backfill any gap in funding as a result of needing to close the 27 gap, correct?

That would certainly be an option for council.

So just yes, technically, I would, but I want to add something, Mayor, that when you all adopted the fiscal year 26 budget, we gave you a balanced budget plan for fiscal year 27.

Now it requires monitoring as we go through this year, so but but we at least have a runway that we know we need to land the plan on generally.

Understood.

I just want to make sure though that we all understand that that is potentially an option as we are monitoring the situation and understanding that discretionary money could in fact be used to fill that gap.

Okay.

The um the tabletop is supposed to also help.

The intent of that is to help us understand how we might the results of that can help us understand how we would actually inform our guidance to you here.

Um would it be possible and help us understand kind of the next steps if we wanted to delay providing guidance to you today until we understood truly some of the ramifications of that of that from that tabletop to provide you best guidance?

Because I understand as I as you laid out, Melody, much of this is really just kind of carrying forward previous guidance.

But as we anticipate the impacts of these of these cuts and can have a you know get some more clarity on that through through the tabletop.

Um, there is no need to make that assumption that we just do what we have done.

We we could get some more specificity to provide you much much better guidance because maybe that distribution looks much different.

Maybe we actually do a lot more for senior independents.

Maybe we actually do a lot more for senior independence, maybe we do a lot more when it comes to one of the other categories.

So can you help us understand if we wanted to provide you guidance informed by the tabletop's results?

What would that do to your timeline?

So we uh currently are planning to issue the RFP on December the first with um you know going through submission and evaluation process and and getting in front of council on May the 8th that could be adjusted so that um we issue after the tabletop exercise and guidance, which I believe is planned for January or January or December.

Um and then we would look at how we get to June the first.

June the first being our target since we will have contracts expiring at the end of May.

So the urgency would be to um be able to finalize process or uh contracts for June 1st start.

Okay.

Um the other option though, if it doesn't start on on one June, um it starts one October.

Is that right?

Conceivably to extend the the eight month contracts to 12 months to the full 12 months, right?

Okay.

So just to summarize what what you said, we could utilize the results from the tabletop, extend these contracts from eight to twelve months, meaning those contracts would start on one October, not one June.

Um, but that would allow us the opportunity to ensure that the guidance we provided to you was best informed by by the tabletop.

Yes, okay, got it.

Um let's see on the on the criteria on slide excuse me.

Slide 14 of the solicitation requirements.

Um, I have appreciated the point um raised by uh councilwoman Alterete Govito about how a lot of the non nonprofits, you know, you you recognize a key part of your job is is fundraising, and I think it is helpful that we might help some of these organizations incentivize them.

Um could have we looked at how we might um essentially give some of these nonprofits um more points uh in their application process as we see over time that city funding is becoming a smaller and smaller percentage of their overall budget.

We could definitely do that.

We give points now for sustainability plans.

Um we can make that more specific and that we would actually need to see progress over time.

I appreciate that.

Thank you.

Okay.

Okay.

Chair Corr.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you so much for this presentation.

Oh, I just disconnected that.

Thank you for this presentation, Melody, and and thank you for all your work, Jessica, on this.

I know you guys know that we've been exploring this for the last several months to try to really figure out how do we best support these organizations that do so much work for our community.

So just to level set on some numbers, right?

We there I think there's been this misnomer that these nonprofit agencies are solely dependent on city funding.

Quite in fact, if you look at the percentage of their budgets that relies on our funding, taking into account the one outlier that's at 59%, the average percentage of our funding that's their budget is 7.77%.

And that includes the outlier, which you know is basically pulling it up.

So on average, if you take out that outlier, we're less than 5% of these nonprofits' budgets.

So then why are they fighting so hard for this money?

Why are they fighting for 5% of their money for which they have to literally submit attendance reports for all of the work that they do and get scrutinized and audited by our commute by our our departments because that's the level of um expectation that we've set for them?

Like, why is it so important?

So uh based on that, I want to ask Laura to come up.

Laura's from the Kronkaski Foundation.

Many of you all may know she's done uh her spent her whole whole life doing philanthropy and supporting our nonprofit organization.

So Laura, will you just tell us a little bit about what the city funding uh means for you as a funder in our community?

Well, I uh I'm prepared to talk about just the general funders landscape, and as councilwoman carr mentioned, there are many of us, and each each one of the funders plays a vital role in the overall operation of the organization.

What we are seeing outside of government funding, so I represent the private foundations, the corporate foundations, um, the family foundations.

What we're seeing is explosive growth and requests for assistance.

For example, for our November, we have a November board meeting coming up.

We had 14 million dollars in requests.

And 14 million dollars represents what we would give out in an entire year, not just in one quarter.

For $15 million budget, we had $62 million in requests.

So just to give you a picture, without city funding, that growth, there would be an even larger gap.

Organizations are very dependent on a diversity of revenue sources, including the city.

I think the other piece that organizations really need help on that weighs in when you're making an investment is their capacity to operate as a strong and sustainable business.

So the other trend that we're seeing in the funders' community is a lot of asks for help.

Can you help us explore mergers and acquisitions?

Can you help us recruit new board members?

Can you help us teach our board members about governance?

And the list goes on on can you help us with budget planning?

Can you help us with scenario planning as we face these cuts?

So our investments are not only important in the operation and the services to clients, but they're also really important in optimizing the organization's ability to function well.

I think the other ask and the other piece that we've been working on in the funders' community is helping organizations to be able to articulate the impact of their work.

So not just telling us about activity and how many people they serve, but how well do you provide that service and how are people better off as a result of your service?

Because in this competitive landscape, that also becomes really critical in making decisions about where you direct your funds.

The other trends that we're seeing are CEO burnout.

We can't, and we have some amazing CEO leaders and staff in San Antonio.

So that's I think another need that needs to be addressed, and that we're addressing with funding.

Staff turnover and wages for staff, all of these things again are issues that weigh in again to the funding that you provide as well as the funding that we provide.

I think the other thing worth noting as you think about funding, I think that the general funder footprint is also changing a lot.

We have less corporations giving money.

We have corporations in terms of deciding what they're going to give away, they're impacted to by by tariffs and costs of goods increasing.

And so the amount of money potentially that they have on the table to give away is decreasing.

We have a lot of private family foundations in San Antonio.

There is a big shift occurring right now in the leadership of those family foundations, where the original founders who created these foundations, the leadership and the funding decisions are now focused or shifting to third, fourth, and fifth generation of those families.

And it's very, you know, they're they're going through through a change.

It's very difficult to get four or five, fifteen, twenty family members to align on a strategy about how that money is going to be given away now versus how it was decided to be given away by the by the original founders.

Um overall, I think this increasingly competitive landscape just means that more than ever we need all of us.

We need the city funding, we need private foundation funding, and we need corporate funding.

We need all of us at the table.

Just real quickly, some of the strategies that we're deploying because I think it really aligns with the things that Melody shared in her presentation.

We are looking at, you know, I think that you all know there's over 13,000 nonprofits that exist.

Um, that includes schools and churches.

I know it's not just nonprofit organizations that are represented today, but um, we're looking at mapping the ecosystem.

So who are all the nonprofits serving children?

Who are all the nonprofits serving seniors?

What do they do?

Where is their overlap?

Where are their gaps?

How do we make sure that there's not gaps?

And how do we really vet who are the most essential organizations in ensuring that our city functions well?

Because as I think all of you know, as decreases are made in any area of funding, it just creates a greater need somewhere else.

So one in four foster kids as they age out of the foster care system will end up homeless, sex trafficked in jail.

So you're just transferring the expense somewhere else when you're reducing funding in one area.

And I don't think that that's a great solution.

I don't think that that makes sense.

As Melody said, I think as funders, we're also really looking at equity in terms of how we give money away, that we're not, you know, the funders sitting on high deciding where the money is going to be given away, but we are partnering with and working alongside these organizations, whether it's with capacity building or really listening and understanding their needs.

And then the last piece that I wanted to mention is just collaboration, as Melody said, collaboration among the funding groups is more important than ever.

We have started a beyond giving collaborative where multiple funders have put in money to and we're partnering with a nonprofit council to build capacity and help these organizations optimize.

And uh lastly, I know that many of you had the opportunity to visit with many of our nonprofit representatives last week when they did their essay to essay advocacy campaign.

And again, that came out of the collaborative work that we're doing, creating one unified voice to really understand the impact from the economic engine that our nonprofit partners are with over 13 billion in economic impact, 80,000 jobs a year.

Um every dollar that you all give them is leveraged with an 11 additional dollars from other funders.

So again, I think if you all are looking at a world where you're gonna completely eliminate city funding, I think it would I think it would be incredibly damaging to our city, to our partners, and to our ability to serve um the residents of San Antonio.

Thank you so much, Laura.

I really appreciate it.

Um so I'll just uh use my last minute to say I think we have to come together as a council and realize we're talking about 25 million dollars, which is a little more than half of a percent of our city's budget.

And these organizations are the ones that are doing preventative work in our communities.

So if there's additional funding, I absolutely think that we need to actually execute on that, but at the very least, we have to think about what it means to these organizations that we believe and we work side by side with the leaders in our community that really are doing this work day in and day out.

And so if you're here from a nonprofit, will you please stand?

Thank you guys so much for the work that you do.

We really appreciate it.

You guys are the heroes.

Um, we just follow in your footsteps.

So thank you all for working day in and day out for our kiddos and for our unhouse folks and for our foster youth and for our older adults, whoever whatever population you serve, we're really appreciative.

Thank you, Mayor.

Chair McKee Rodriguez.

Thank you, Mayor.

I appreciate the presentation and I look forward to the tabletop exercise that we'll be participating in.

Um I really just have a little uh small bit of feedback, and we had our one-on-one meeting uh and briefing about this item, and I gave the same feedback, but I'll share it with my colleagues for uh for y'all's consideration.

Um the nonprofit council be engaged for the solicitation process for input on both its crafting and creation as well as uh potentially as a scoring member, um, so long as uh the member isn't actively like seeking funding.

Um, second to that is I remember during the last conversation that we had, one of the things that we did want to discuss was the term lengths being two years, the contract terms being two years, and what I felt I took away from that was that there was interest in shorter term and longer term contracts.

I may be wrong in how many people actually said that, but it's a different council now, and so I'd love y'all's feedback.

I one of the challenges I have with a four-year contract is that that would essentially be our final delegate agency process for this council, and that doesn't that eliminates our ability to be flexible as needs arise.

And three, four years ago, we probably wouldn't have anticipated finding out the meals on wheels was gonna have a substantial uh part of its funding stripped away.

And so we would then as quickly as we possibly could work to address that.

And so as the year so I say all that to say that I would still pitch a one-year and three-year contract.

One year would allow us for some maybe and even for some of the smaller contracts, we allow it to be one year, and that allows us to, as we receive requests from a host of nonprofits, specifically smaller ones who maybe missed out on their opportunity or were daunted by the task of completing the application, it'll allow us to say, hey, next year apply for this process.

Whereas if we move forward with a four-year contract, we have to say, well, you know, 20 years ago right now, 20 November 2029, look out for the next opportunity for some funding.

And I don't think that's you know right or fair, and I don't think it's conducive to our needs as a council to address the the needs of our community that we can't necessarily uh fulfill through our core city services.

We rely on nonprofits to do so much of that work.

Um the last bit I think is more about the broader uh the broader the community that's served and what I think some of this funding accomplishes.

And we know that a lot of this is crime preventative in nature, and so I would ask um I wanted to talk about it a little bit for our uh our hotspot crime prevention plan if uh Maria Villa Gomez or Vargas wouldn't mind.

And so I would ask, um I wanted to talk about a little bit for our uh our hotspot crime prevention plan, if uh Maria Villa Gomez or Vargas wouldn't mind.

Where are we at as it stands right now in the plan?

Are we and I understand it's kind of tiered, so there's phase two and phase three for different areas of town, but where roughly are we?

Would you describe?

So phases one and two are active.

So phase one is a hot spot policing, phase two is the uh where we focus with in this case apartment complexes that they they have high crime, and the hot spot policing was not a solution to reduce that crime.

So we are working with two uh apartment complexes right now, and then phase three, which is focused deterrence, uh, we're gonna uh implement that in 2026.

I don't have a specific date as we're doing the planning process, but that's a plan right now.

What is the budget for that phase?

So focus the Terrence does not have a budget for that.

Uh, one of the things that you saw in Melanie's presentation is through this competitive process, we would like to seek nonprofits that can support that work.

So when we get to that phase, uh, we can call on those organizations to help hope hopefully help us with those uh individuals that participate in the program.

And that money is split between domestic violence intervention and prevention, as well as financial security and education, all three of those categories have about 1.9 million anticipated.

Yes, and it's it's not just for that process, but it'll be included as part of that those three uh pillars that you mentioned.

My concern is that, and when we previously uh discussed this plan, and in the most recent briefings, I believe that we received at public safety, there was about three to four million dollars set aside for those uh interventions for both phase two and phase three, and it's been substantially cut and now split between uh different categories within this process.

And so I want to be sure that we have flexibility to what I want to see.

What I what I want to be clear about is we made the promise, sure council members made a promise that we were gonna put a police officer on every street, we were gonna hire 3,000 within the next six days, and then you know, we were gonna move to phase two and phase three.

Um phase two and phase three, we also made promises as a part of this plan that we were going to accomplish, and we've now seen that funding get cut pretty substantially.

And so, how can we utilize the delegate agency process and the organizations that we're gonna be partnering with to be nimble in their operations to as a as a hotspot is identified as a potential for phase two and phase three.

How do we engage them and target their efforts there?

And how can we structure contracts in that way?

Yes, so um phase two councilmen, the majority of the participants are city departments.

So we have animal care services, neighborhood and housing services, EHS, Metro Health, to help us identify or address some of the circumstances that perhaps is creating crime in those areas where we use some of the community uh safety funding that we reallocated to street lighting, was to uh be able to augment some of those services.

So we we don't know how much money we would need until we start those programs based on the gaps that we identify on those properties.

For phase three, our goal has been to work with nonprofit organizations to be able to help us uh connect individuals to services with the goal of um that they are not uh uh committing crimes again.

Uh, but we did not set aside a specific dollar amount back then when we allocated those three million dollars was with the intent of utilizing it for that effort, and we ended up using probably about maybe half a million dollars of the original amount.

So, all that to say that we feel that based on the current allocations of the departments, we can refocus some of that funding to address uh phases two and three of the crime reduction plan, including delegate agency funding.

Gotcha, and I just want to um be clear that the hotspot areas because of all of these efforts, not just because we're adding police officers, right?

Because the adding police officers is citywide, because of these efforts to not just police but to also support these communities, we're seeing a 22% decrease in crime.

And phase three allows for that to be a long-term impact that we don't see crime uptick again just because the hotspot is no longer designated a hotspot.

And so I'd be interested in, I guess, continuing this conversation at the public safety committee meeting if the chair wouldn't mind agendizing it.

Um, but I think it this funding will also play a key role in that, and I want us to be strategic in it, and I um I guess I just with phase, I guess what I am aiming to say is that with phase two, because it's city departments, you know, Eric says you do this, you do this, we're gonna do it.

And I um I guess I just with phase, I guess what I am aiming to say is that with phase two, because it's city departments, you know, Eric says you do this, you do this, we're gonna do it.

With our nonprofits that we contract with as a part of this process, we don't have that flexibility unless it's structured into the contract.

And so we need to make sure that we have that flexibility baked into the contract so that it's not now you already gave us the money, this is our contract, this is all we can do, and our priorities are elsewhere.

I need us to be able to direct in that sense.

Right, you want to say something.

Yeah, that was good.

That was giving me my question.

Because what I what I heard you said, I want to make sure that I think it's an excellent point.

You want to your your feedback is is to make sure that if we do the the solicitation that we build into it clear expectations that we're gonna need help with phase three.

And I would just want and you said it, you said it perfectly at the end, but I just wanted to make sure that I was hearing exactly what you were saying because we've contemplated that, but I don't but but maybe we need to take it a little bit further in terms of actual uh structure, meaning um as much as it can be.

Some of that will be developed a year from now or less than a year from now, but we want their we want their assistance because they're a big part of phase three, and we can we can do that in the solicitation.

Sure, and so through that solicitation, we would be very specific about the services that we're wanting to purchase, basically.

And then through the contracting process and the performance scorecard that all agencies enter into, um, they would spell out where they're going to provide the service, what service are going to provide, how much, and that's how we would monitor the program.

So it would be very um uh detailed in entering into those agreements.

Perfect.

Thank you.

I'll close out my last few seconds with uh and I I do want to address I think the mayor's point, right?

If she was asking for us to consider the possibility that some funding is possible to be is possible to be used to close our budget deficit over the next several years and to start thinking about these things long term.

I do want to place a certain amount of trust in Eric that we give just we give direction and we're asking for the world, right?

But we also place a certain trust in you that if our if our deficit is gonna grow, you let us or if something that some direction that we're giving is incompatible with our financial forecast and our plan that you are making decisions in that way.

And so I I don't I would hate to see this go towards that.

We don't we don't have to do trust, we can do trust and verify.

Uh that's the council.

Right, absolutely.

Absolutely.

Well, so uh absolutely and I think and I mentioned it a second ago.

You we have a plan that we're gonna monitor this this year, this fiscal year.

We have projected, and it's included in the adopted budget document.

Um planned further reductions that we're gonna need.

Now that that assumes no changes to anything or the current economic cycles continue, no changes to taxable values, sales tax, so forth.

And we're gonna monitor that uh during the year, and that first report is at the end of December.

We'll do the end of year financial update reported.

That will be in my mind a really key metric to see where we're at so far in the first part of the fiscal year and how we closed out the year.

And uh I I appreciate it, councilman.

I will let you guys know and keep you guys updated.

Um, but we have a we have a balanced 2027 plan.

It's gonna require some changes and we'll update it, we'll monitor it, we'll put it before you guys next year.

But I uh I I feel like we've got a path laid out ahead of us, and as long as we stay somewhere near the path, we'll be fine.

We're gonna there's gonna be hard decisions.

Um but but uh that that's the key part about a two-year balanced budget plan and that financial policy because it gives us a little bit of a look around a corner and makes sure that we're prepared.

And if we had and if we're not prepared enough in December, I'll let you know when we'll make further adjustments so that we stay ahead.

But Chair, you bring up, I mean, that's that's essentially why we're doing all of this, right?

So there is a plan, um, but there are always options in every plan.

It's like, okay, well, if this happened, well, actually, we didn't think it the cuts were gonna be as bad, or we didn't think we would see some of these as soon as we are.

Again, we saw the meals on wheels cuts this morning.

We weren't anticipating that as soon as we're seeing it, right?

So some of these things, it's really about understanding what are the range of options at our disposal if the plan um six months from now is no longer valid, right?

Well, now we know it's we've we can look here, we can look in other places, but really it's this is all about giving ourselves as much awareness of where we have a little bit some leverage, some options if if we wanted to to do those, right?

And I think the earlier we understand those options the better, so we can we can consider those as things are changing in our um economy very, very quickly.

Thank you, Mary.

And thank you uh for the presentation for all the folks who are here today and do this work every single day uh to support our communities in day in and day out.

Um I was looking over a lot of this uh presentation.

Uh a lot of it I think I feel really good with thinking about the um the contract changes, um the length of the years, the the dollar amount changes as well, uh even that just the category categorization uh that we're doing just to make it clear about what we're trying to focus in on, what things can really support our core city services, what things are we doing to kind of address the issue, but maybe uh aren't fully supplementing the work that we're doing in-house here.

Um of course the focus on vulner serving vulnerable populations.

Um Melody, I know you we spoke uh yesterday about this a bit.

Um with the four-year contract term, um what would happen though if uh if a contract wasn't renewed in two year, three year within that contract framework, what would happen uh to that money?

Would we reopen the bid or we wait till the next one?

Oh no, we would have a couple of options so we could reallocate within the current agencies if we had an agency that was exceeding their goals and needed additional funding, or we could potentially fund a program that wasn't funded because we would have a competitive application.

And councilman, we would line that up with the annual budget process.

Got it, got it.

Okay.

That's helpful.

Thank you.

Um the things that I'm stuck on with this um is thinking about uh how we measure moving the needle, right?

How do we measure um addressing the issues at scale, right?

Of course, understanding that funding is limited across the board for ourselves, for nonprofits, and then yeah, I guess that's it, for the ecosystem overall.

Um my concern is always trying to figure out ways that we can do this work at scale, that we're making uh serious dance in domestic violence, we're making serious dents in poverty, we're making serious dance in homelessness, uh, that we're seeing uh those issues be fully addressed to a point.

Um I guess I don't know if it's necessarily within the reporting requirements or within the contract itself, but maybe it is.

Um Melody, I don't know if you have any uh perspective on how do we measure the status of poverty?

How do we measure uh the status of domestic violence in our community relevant to the re the funding that we're doing here and the work that we do uh as our city?

Is that within the annual reports?

Is that within this contracts, or is it within a different kind of analysis?

Sort of a different process.

So as far as the delegate agencies are concerned, they all have a performance scorecard.

We monitor to that scorecard into their compliance with contract requirements, invoicing requirements.

That's the standard monitoring procedure.

Separately, we have a social demographer that that puts out that poverty information and does that through her research and connection to census data as well as some surveying.

Got it.

And that's that's helpful because I think I think it would be helpful.

I know I talked about this during the budget too, is that if we had that kind of or maybe it was doing a different committee meeting, um, thinking about how we can review that data pretty frequently, and of course it takes a while, right?

Demography changes at different paces, of course.

Um but to see the kind of deaths that we're making here, I think is the most important part, right?

If we're seeing that poverty is staying stagnant, if we're seeing that it's not just the fault necessarily that the nonprofits uh on on their own or then like that, but I think it's trying to understand are we using these resources to the best of our abilities, not only within this pot of funding, uh, but other parts of funding too, to where we're actually committing to that larger systemic uh goal of addressing uh whatever issue we're focusing in on.

Um I think the council member Diggs' point thinking about the phase three solution, right?

How do we targeting these resources, especially as we come more limited to the areas that we're seeing recurring issues of either public safety concerns or the issues that relate to public safety, like poverty, like educational needs, um, like workforce development.

Um I what I don't want is to get stuck in as a city, as an entity, or as even a collaborative organization work that we're doing, is I don't want to see us get stuck uh trying to serve and it feels awful for myself to think about this because I am a someone who's a universalist, but to try to serve everybody when we can't, and we're trying to still meet these needs of uh a certain area or a certain recurring population or recurring issue in the area, when we can target those resources there and really see movement in that area and hopefully move to the next, right?

That we solve the issue, we move on to the next one.

And again, I understand solving poverty is difficult.

I understand these things are difficult.

Um but I guess that's what that's where I struggle when I look at not only this pot of funding, but overall the work that we do here is what what is the the cost benefit here of giving 100,000 dollars to this organization or a million dollars this organization, uh, and we're still seeing that struggle.

Um what can we do better in terms of collaboration or in terms of system wide improvements within policymaking or within uh physical structures that are one stop shops or it's uh other kind of programs are needed at a universal scale or a larger scale to really address this issue at hand?

But overall, again, I think this this kind of these contract terms will be a little bit helpful with that, right?

The making sure that the funding is a bit higher so that we can really push a little further on this, I think will be helpful.

Um I think it'll just come down to maybe necessarily reporting, reporting yes is always helpful, but looking at the larger data and the broader data to understand how are we making these dents and these issues that we're talking about.

Let me see.

I know this is something that Melody didn't you and I talked about too, but I think it'd be worthwhile.

Uh I don't know if we talked about this in the budget too.

Maybe we did, but thinking about the cost benefit analysis too of some of this work, not everything here, right?

Not thinking about bringing any of these one organizations work in-house fully uh by any means, but I think understanding are there places within our city within our structures here in our organization to that could do some of this work, right?

Maybe that's the the work that we could do a bit better to be a better partner.

Is there something that we can do in-house?

What does that cost look like?

It's the cost of that in terms of service, in terms of labor, in terms of all that work, uh, programming here in our city, uh, but also the benefit, right?

To uh to do that and let our nonprofit partners do another part of the work that they're focused in on more so uh maybe that's the question, but more of a comment if we could do some of that research into the future as we go through this work, I think it'd be helpful to kind of get those snapshots right of how we can better address we will regroup and and work on the cost of that, what that would look like at this point.

I yeah, I don't have a good response.

No, not a problem.

And I think that'll come from too with a coordination with the nonprofit council, of course, and everybody to understand the ecosystem, the the landscape of whatever issue we're looking at, and that is it the best move, right, to give the funding here, or could we do something in house that could better address this issue at scale?

Is it development in housing?

Is it um try to provide access to healthcare?

Is it doing work within uh the SA forward plan, right?

What are those things that we could do here that maybe we can use some of this money that way or other parts of money this way?

Um, so that way we can really get at the core of the issue or the root of the issue, right?

Uh that's where I think a lot of my focus comes from with this.

Um I think I'll stop there.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh Councilwoman Aldrate Gavito.

Thank you.

Uh thanks for this presentation, Melody.

I'm glad we're having this discussion today.

I admire the work of the nonprofits in our community.

And having previously served as an executive director of a nonprofit, trust me, I know what it takes.

Um, the sweat, sweat, blood, and tears that you that you pour into your purpose um and the nonprofits per purpose.

So thank you to all the nonprofits for um being here today.

Um, that being said, I have said that the city budget can't be all things to all people.

And I'm actually gonna piggyback off of my colleague Councilman Galvan and his his point in that, you know, yes, the city does not have an unlimited budget, right?

And we do need to be strategic on how we are spending it and see and and figuring out a way we can see how we are moving the needle because we can't just be giving to you know so many nonprofits and not seeing anything change, right?

You know, um, you know, just as foundations wouldn't do that, right?

Um, Laura, I appreciated your comments, and and I think that there are you know, some of the conversation points when I met with SA to SA was there are a lot of nonprofits, probably too many, and we have a small corporate base, we have a small foundation base, right?

So we're all going your nonprofits are all going after the same donors again and again.

And so I do think I'm I'm interested in y'all's mapping efforts, so that way we can see okay, who is gonna take the ball on domestic violence?

Who is gonna take the ball on um solving XYZ issue in homelessness?

Who is gonna take the ball on helping our our homeless youth or you know what whatever the cause is.

And I do think that this is a good time for us to to pause and and and figure out how we're gonna be strategic going forward, not because we want to, but because we have to, right?

You know, there are a lot of cuts.

There's there's obviously the news about meals on wills, and so this is a good time to take a pause and say, how's the city being strategic, but also working with um the nonprofit council and the foundations to say let's be smarter with the dollars because we know we're gonna all have to tighten our belts, you know.

And I and I think that that's a worthy exercise.

Um of the other things, uh I I did want to just add Melody, because I know that you were looking for some specific feedback items.

Uh I am on board with continuing to make sure a majority of the funding is going to the essential services.

I'm also on board with moving up partnership to the competitive process, um, and uh as opposed to staying on the designated funding list as far as moving to a four-year competitive contracts.

Um, I'm glad Councilman McKee Rodriguez brought that up because I I am too hesitant about that.

Um I understand from a from an um nonprofit nonprofit perspective, you want that runway so you can plan, um, but at the same time too it's uh it's sensitive just because we you know I know that we I feel that once we're the city, you know, we're locked in on a four-year contract, there's little wiggle room if any to get out of it, you know.

It almost it becomes a a um I'm struggling to find the right word, but um maybe a natural relationship, and it's hard to change it.

It and it's disruptive if in fact we do decide to change it.

Um I um appreciated um you know, I I do want to clarify, I don't think any of us thought that any nonprofit is just sitting there waiting for full city funding.

I know that some some not some nonprofits get a lot chunk of city funding, but um, you know, I I do think that we should make sure that we're implementing and being crystal clear about match funding.

You know, hey, if you're gonna get a hundred thousand dollars from the city, you better go find a hundred thousand dollars somewhere else.

Um I do also think that maybe for our um discretionary funding, we put sunset clauses in, you know, and say, hey, the city will work with you for three years, maybe 60 percent the first year, 40 percent the second year, 20 percent the the third year, so proper expectations are set with the executive director, with the executive directors and the whole team.

Um, I think those are some of those ways that we we can look at this, but but I do think that um again in in partnership with SA to SA or nonprofit council, we need to see how we are being strategic holistically with not only uh the funding that's existing outside of the city, but the city funding as well.

Um, so that way we're we're um we're making sure our money is going further and more impactful to the community.

Um those are all my comments.

Thank you, Councilwoman Spears.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um so I agree with the with um the councilwoman's point about the sunset of some of the nonprofits.

I the goal is to see the nonprofits be self-sustaining.

I I think um I'm curious.

I I noticed that one of the items on slide nine was ensuring that the agency match requirement isn't in more than 50 percent, but here we're hearing that most of them are only using seven to eight percent.

I don't understand the question if that's accurate.

That is accurate.

So we we set that limit to ensure that we don't have agencies where the majority of their funding is coming from the city.

But of what we've seen as we monitor um that requirement is that most of them really are far below that.

That's just a wide berth to me.

Um I want to touch on your points to I make sure and get that to you, but um I I think we definitely need to determine the core functions for the city, and those are non-negotiable items that we that we I think can mostly agree on that we need to address here in the city.

And um, but I do I I agree with my colleagues about the four-year process.

I just we can't have that kind of commitment there.

It it makes me nervous even thinking about it.

And um I I do think there's probably a few areas that need to be designated, but um, and then they'll do that annual budget process.

Um, I don't think I agree with the increase from 50 to 100,000.

I think that we just need to evaluate everybody.

Um contract renewal.

I think that's the same.

I'm still puzzled about this match requirement.

Um why it's even there if it's way far less.

But um, I was looking at your spreadsheet, and I'm seeing many areas where it's just clear there has to be ways we can consolidate some of these nonprofits.

I think every one of them is doing worthy work.

It's just how can we combine efforts with the nonprofit council with the county, with the suburban cities, like there's there's churches.

I mean, they're doing it on their own.

So there's just got to be ways we can collaborate and combine things better.

I don't see mental health on here as a main focus, and that is all we are hearing in our society on a daily basis as something that we need to focus on.

And I don't see it anywhere.

I see it within some programs.

Um homelessness bucket and family.

A lot of them strengthening as well.

Right.

And and so I that's I just wanted to point that out that that's something that is very important.

We've all talked about it over the budget, um, and it impacts all these areas, I think.

Um, some of the questions I had coming out of it.

I noticed that on slide four that we have 40 percent of our human services allocations to home to homelessness, and then we're gonna have the 26 million dollar homeless services department budget.

Is there a way to evaluate what we can be absorbing into the department to be allocated into other areas?

That funding is included in the homeless department's budget.

Okay.

Um I would like to see us doing more on our side of prevention instead of post um intervention, post-abuse intervention.

Um I think that's that's extremely important.

I noticed that what we know about the homeless population.

We're seeing eight percent of our budget going to the domestic violence prevention in our our designated agencies, but we know that that's a huge portion of our homeless population as well.

And and I just think that's backwards.

Um we need to address.

I I don't understand the the disparity there.

Um there was something else I wanted to bring up.

And really, just a quick note.

Um, the Metro Health Department also has a domestic violence initiative as well as some funded agencies.

So maybe we together, yeah.

Um we can take a look at what that looks like.

Um I just it's it I appreciate so much what you said at the beginning, Mayor.

I I think that's a a lot of good points about we look at how we can close some of that deficit funding and really evaluating how these dollars are being spent and how um effective they are and go with the most effective.

And and just I think that's it just feels so overly complicated to me when I'm looking at all these various agencies all doing worthy work.

But who's doing this the best?

And do we need to be involved here?

And can the private sector support this?

Which ones are real really are us that we need to be helping with and fall under that umbrella?

And um, I hate to say that because I do believe everyone's doing worthy work, but if we have you know five people doing the same job in different offices, that's just hard for me to say here take take these people's tax dollars, and we're all doing the same work in different areas.

And I definitely think because of the federal cuts, combining our efforts with the other governmental entities around us is gonna be absolutely essential.

So I want to say thank you to all the nonprofits though.

I see you, I know you are working hard, your hearts are in the right place, and you have genuine interest in helping your community, and and so if I seem callous, it's not, it's just concern for how our tax dollars are being used and being wise about that.

And and you know, we don't all have to be the king of our castle.

We just need to get the work done.

So that's the effort that I I want to leave us with.

So um thank you.

Melody, maybe just to clarify in case it is raised by any others.

The matching requirement, the fact that the number is lower is is a good thing.

Okay, I want to make sure we're all on the on the same page.

Okay, yes, but uh yep, it is good.

Got it.

Okay.

Uh council member White.

Thanks.

Uh I'll be brief and just highlight some of the the comments of my colleagues.

Um I agree with the councilwoman.

It's it's far too complicated.

There's there's too much going on.

We do need to simplify everything.

And in the homeless example, is is a good example because up there it said, you know, I think it's 10 million dollars out of the delegate agency funding is going to homeless.

But I mean that that doesn't even right, Melody.

That doesn't include the the homeless hotel, right?

That's from a different that's from a different funding bucket.

So there's all these different funding buckets, you know, that are around.

I mean, I would like to see like how much are we actually spending on on you know domestic violence?

How much are we actually spending on homeless when you when you look at the money from all the different buckets together so that the council can get an accurate picture of totally what we're spending on each total, what we're spending on each issue.

Um so that's one I agree as well.

Since I've been here, we have had a really in my opinion, poor working relationship with the county.

We talked a lot about that in um in my first year year in office, and so to the extent we can partner with with the county or some of our surrounding cities to help attack some of these issues, especially the homeless issue being um being a good one where we could collaborate, um, I think we need we need to do that too.

I'm gonna in agreement with the councilman and my colleagues on on not doing the the four years.

Um you were nice enough to send me um some information after our meeting the other day.

So so we we fund about 80 of these delegate agencies a year, right?

And so you gave me the information over the last five years.

So 400, you know, I know it's not 400 different agencies, but 400 times we've funded um uh you know one of these delegate agency contracts, and only five times out of the 400 have we ever found that one of these agencies is not performing.

I'll tell you, I I don't believe our luck is that good.

Um I I don't believe our selection process is that good to where we have just happened to pick groups where where um everything is going is going right 98 plus percent percent of the time.

Uh and I want to be clear as well.

Um the work that's being done is is amazing work, it's necessary um for our community, um it needs to continue uh to to be done, and to the extent that city council can help with it, um I think that we should.

Um but I think we need to do a better job of of monitoring and figuring out who exactly should get these funds.

And every delegate agency and nonprofit that I talk to now, I'm I'm I'm advising them.

I think we need to have one-page documents from these groups that set forth if they've received funding in the past, what they've been able to do with that money, um, what they're asking for now, and what they expect the return on on that investment to be, because all these groups have great missions.

It's impossible to look at one of these mission statements from from any of the groups and say we should give to that one instead of that one.

I mean, that's really tough to do.

The groups that get this limited funding, I think should really have to demonstrate um a return on investment for our city.

Um I do agree with with the sunsetting as well.

Um I I don't I don't I don't know how many years it it should be, but um year after year after year for the same groups to continue to get money.

I I I think we need to uh I I think we need to look at that too.

Umganizations using the funding for direct services as opposed to administrative um needs.

Do we do we track that?

Yes.

So every organization or every program provides a budget ahead of time.

They have a limit of 20% for administration, and we monitor that by line item.

Okay, so we do we do have a limit there.

Okay, that's good.

Um I guess on a yearly basis, do we do we look at you know, programs that are that are discretionary versus essential?

How often do we do we take a look and and review that?

So this is really the first time we have proposed categorizing things that way, but what we look at is we have programs that the the department operates and we have agencies that support us in that.

So their metrics are tied to our metrics for that program.

Next level is a good example.

Goodwill and communities and schools provide our coaching and our case management counseling, and we we monitor them through their scorecard, but also our performance measures are dependent on their performance measures, so we know exactly what they're doing.

And they share space okay.

And um I saw in the in the presentation on slides seven and eight.

Uh designated funding applies when only one provider can deliver a service.

How how often do we do we look to see if that's still the case?

It's so every time we do the cycle, we ask council to um consider designated agencies, our recommendations for designating agencies.

And we do that based on you know that the service is necessary, that the service is unique to the community.

Yeah.

And that's when we have that conversation.

Okay.

Um I guess you answered that you guys review these contracts on an annual basis, and you look at the performance metrics, and if they're not cutting it, they're gone.

And this is this has happened um five times in the last we actually review them monthly.

You review them monthly.

Okay.

Um I mean that's that's really what what I have, Mayor.

I I would just stress stress again that whether we're in tough fiscal times or not, um the most important thing we do is how we spend the people's money.

And uh we need to we need to make sure that that the money is being used in a way that that provides the the city with it with the biggest return on on investment.

And so uh I look forward to to continuing the conversation.

Yeah, thank you, councilman.

I I think we certainly all share that that sentiment.

Um how we do that obviously is uh a little bit different based on our understandings of of the needs in in our community.

Um the point that you raised though, and this actually came up in in our pre-brief uh with with Melody, which is you know, this distinction between um kind of core and and discretionary.

If, for example, in the course of the tabletop, we see wow our seniors and those on fixed income are really going to feel it when the implementation of these federal cuts come.

And oh, by the way, when we're looking at where some of these changes in our budget are going to be, it's really gonna hurt our seniors.

So that it's almost then kind of a distinction that really doesn't matter.

It's how do we shore up those that are in the most need, whether you call it core or discretionary, in light of what we're experiencing in our community, we all just say, no, no, no, that's just the most important thing we need to do, right?

Which is help those folks.

And so I think it's it's and that's why it's really important that I think that we we kind of go through this exercise, understand who is going to potentially um frankly bear the the biggest brunt of the impacts of these cuts at the same time we're making changes in the services that we may need to provide as a result of closing the gap, then we can provide really good guidance to Melody and her team about okay, we talked earlier about um, you know, as uh um one of the other three categories, but actually, because of frankly the lack of resilience in our own system, we really need to make sure we're shoring up, for example, senior independence because we just see that continuing to frankly cascade the impacts of that, and there isn't nearly as much of help in our community or at the county level.

I think what that will also do, councilman in the in the tabletop is help us understand what more can the county help us do, right?

When they also look at those results.

Um so your points are all well taken.

I think we all share the concern about how how are we measuring efficacy, how are we measuring um effectiveness, and as we look at the impact of these things, the cumulative effect of of the cuts at the federal level and the need to close the gaps in our own budget, um, how can we best do that and maybe not get so caught up on on how we bucket them, but more so the impact that we are having.

Did you want to add anything else to that, Melody?

Yeah, I was gonna add that um you know we do our goal is to get the dollars that have been allocated into the community, not necessarily to um monitor to the point that um we decide not to fund them.

So we provide a lot of technical assistance, um a lot we spend a lot of time if an agency is not performing during the year, we uh they're on a performance improvement plan and and we work with them to get them to use the dollars uh in the with the expectations that they set forth.

Eric, did you want to add anything?

Just one uh clarification of a couple of council members have talked about um sunset, and I want to understand um what what that's what that entails because um uh sunset to me means that the the con there's a time limit in the contract ends, but but does it mean something else?

And I just wanted four council members that brought that up, so I wanted to better understand Councilman Wiki Rodriguez, we'll just go around.

Thank you.

I don't uh agree with sunsetting, but my understanding would be that we would have a set number of contracts that we allow with a certain agency, and then we would no longer uh fund that agency for X number X number of contract periods.

Councilwoman Yeah, go ahead.

Thank you.

Um yeah, my intention was maybe for our uh discretionary nonprofits, we set the expectation to say, hey, you know, you'll be funded from the city for X number of years, three years again, first year it's 60 percent, you know, of whatever that funding is 40 percent the next year, 20 percent the next year, and then and then your contract is done.

And mostly to set expectations for us and also for them so that they know what to expect and how they need to build their rest of their portfolio.

Thank you.

Yep, thank you for clarifying that.

I I would caution against um I can certainly appreciate how do we incentivize some of these nonprofits to um ensure that they're doing um all that they can to ensure they've got other streams of revenue coming into their budget.

Um however, there is value in nonprofits that have deep expertise doing this work, right?

So I think we're we need to balance who is best postured to do this, who can actually do it, how many actual providers do we have in our community that can do this with some of the other things that are certainly um uh worth consideration, but at the end of the day, it's also about impact, right?

And and who could actually do the work.

Okay.

Any other comments on sunset?

No, okay.

Councilwoman Mesa Gonzalez, thank you.

Thank you for the presentation.

Um to all the nonprofit leaders out there are sitting here today and watching.

Uh, thank you for the work that you all uh do.

We had a great meeting last week with the essay to essay group.

Um so I'm supportive of most of this moving forward.

I just had some questions on the minimum award level.

Um I'm concerned that we might leave some non smaller nonprofits out.

Um there's a cost to submit an application, um, added burden on reporting.

So do we and I know we don't anticipate that pool of money growing over the next couple of years.

Um we know that there's a number of smaller nonprofits that have a long track record in our community.

Um I was wondering if if we would consider lowering the oversight for those lower level awards versus simply just increasing the minimum award from 50 to 100.

Well, we're hope we are planning to reduce the number of performance measures that we monitor working with the agencies to only provide the data that we need to understand the outcomes as far as fiscal requirements, contract requirements, it we would monitor that in the same way that that we monitor a larger contract.

And is there is there any discussion on um not monitoring it in the same way that you would a larger contract?

Um considering the uh amount at the various um points and see what makes sense, you know.

What can we reduce?

Um to some extent though, we will always have to reconcile invoices and validate.

Um but I think there probably are things that we can look at reducing to make it easier on smaller, lower uh funded agencies.

Okay, great.

And does a nonprofit help the nonprofit council?

I think they're are they coming in on that end too with those smaller contracts as well?

We certainly would ask them to help us with that.

Okay, um, and then I there's uh I had a question on uh child safe.

So uh child safe, for my understanding, they're the only local provider that offers multidisciplinary team of law enforcement and prosecution, medical and mental health services.

I know we've provided funding for them in the past, but is there a reason that they're not on the essential list?

So what we fund for um child safe is training in education.

Um we're not funding their um core services multidisciplisciplinary services.

So right now there are a number of other agencies that provide education and training around child abuse and neglect.

So that's the reason that we haven't recommended them for designation because of the services that we're funding.

Okay.

Um on slide five, uh, the children and youth success portion.

Can you provide any details on the programs that we offer for job readiness for youth 14 to 18 years old?

So it's um the next level program, uh youth opportunity program, which is supported by um several of the delegate agencies.

Uh we also provide, I think Good Samaritan Center provides college readiness and and also looking at military readiness and career.

Um I'd have to look at the list, but there's several of them that have components of that, whether it's um programs targeted to high school students that are planning to enter college.

Um we also have the San Antonio Education Partnership that provides college readiness and access uh support services.

Yeah, I think if we can include something in, I understand the work that next level does, especially for at risk use, so I'm supportive of that.

But if there's just something that we can think about or a nonprofit out there uh that's doing work for those kind of middle of the road kids, those kind of C students who just need that access and connection to jobs sooner than later.

Um I think that would be helpful.

Um, we've participated in programs like this in the past with our San Antonio neighborhood youth organization.

I've talked about this with a few people, um, but it's a program that didn't cost a lot of money, about two million dollars.

Um it ran for about 20 years in the city, um, and it was for that demographic of students, right?

That right in the middle that you know.

Yeah, right.

Um, so if we can just consider that, um, I would appreciate that.

I think that's uh I think we're missing that kid when we look at that list.

So we'll provide you more detail on programs that offer those services.

Okay.

And then just to clarify, I've heard folks talk about nonprofits that aren't self-sustaining, but is this more a matter of of increasing their capacity to help us with what we can't do on our own as a city?

I think it's both, really.

Um, so one, you know, we've talked about the we don't want to be the majority funder of programs in case you know there is a change.

Um, but also we do want to um encourage capacity building and encourage their infrastructure strengthening of their infrastructure so that they can help us impact um challenges across the community.

Okay.

I think that's all my questions for now.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Chair of Ugodon.

Uh thank you.

So my belief is that the taxpayer is gonna have to pay, whether it's the um the upstream, which some of the nonprofits do, whether it's the downstream, we eventually have to pay.

And you can call it um generational sin, you can call it you know whatever you want to call it, systematic, this you can call it whatever you want.

I of course, and y'all know where this is going.

I'm gonna go back to redlining.

Years ago, this does this city decided to divide San Antonio up into some haves and have nots.

And so when we look at why we have schools that perform poorly, or why we have people that have mental health issues because they can't deal with their emotions, or why we have people living on the south side that die 20 years than their counterparts on on the north side, it is because leadership in this city made a decision generations ago to divide this city up.

So here we are in a city that has representatives from across the city that live in these different districts saying, how are we going to do this and make this right?

The most cost-effective way is to use our nonprofits because the city cannot sustain a department that the nonprofits do.

So I applaud all of you that are here today.

I know y'all are not in it for the paycheck.

I know this is a calling for you and a passion that you've seen to want to give back.

It is the um it is the tenets of social justice that many of y'all grew up with me in the 70s hearing about if you were raised Catholic.

So here we are, and we're doing this, and I understand that 20 million dollars may look like a lot of money, but in comparison to this budget, it is not.

So if we want to prevent our police budget from passing beyond that 66%, we need to look at what's here and now and say, how are we gonna prioritize?

How are we going to pay?

How do we get these nonprofits to work together and continue to move forward?

So I thank you for what you did last week, meeting and going out to people.

I thank you for coming here today, and I hope that you are encouraged that you hear that this council is committed to moving forward.

Because if not, I know what y'all can do.

You can go out into the streets and you can ask the voters to vote for a tax increase somewhere, county, city, state, to make sure you have the funding that you need to get to get this mission done.

And I wouldn't blame y'all if y'all did.

But we as a city need to understand that they're coming to us, they're asking us to prioritize, and the team has come and brought forward uh a plan, and a plan that I think you've clearly heard.

We're not in favor of the four years, but I do would like to see what Councilman McKee Rodriguez said is maybe the two years, maybe some get three, depending on where it sits on the discretionary or two plus two.

I think we're looking at that too.

Did we expect what's happening with Meals and Wheels to happen?

We were hoping it wouldn't, but we remember the food bank lines during the pandemic.

Am I hoping that the seniors aren't gonna come and need more money?

I I'm crossing my fingers.

We're gonna do as much preventative care as we can.

But when you we cut down the Medicaid, and half of the seniors that live on the South Side can't make it to the medical center, or are they still waiting for university health to be built?

We're gonna we're gonna see some problems, and it's gonna be problematic.

And everything that we talk about is core services, that's only gonna increase.

We're gonna have to pay more for that.

If I have more people that lose their homes and are on the street and having to camp in tents.

So thank you for bringing this forward.

I I'm encouraged about what we have here and the conversation.

I look forward to the tabletops, but I would like to move forward with some flexibility, understanding that as cuts come down, we don't know specifically in San Antonio, and in the way this the city has been cut, who's gonna get hurt, who's gonna need it more in in the more in the more recent future.

I know my seniors are there at the center, they're getting um they're getting their meals, but that number could double if if they when they see them themselves lose their their uh services, and I could see we could see an influx at the senior centers.

Parks and rent could see an influx of people because parents can't afford to send their kids to after school care.

So I think we need to kind of look at that, understand that our nonprofits are they spend the dollar and stretch that dollar because I've worked in nonprofits that do that.

They stretch it in ways that you can't even imagine, and most of those volunteers are taking whatever they get paid, and a percentage of that is going back into the service that they're doing.

So thank you for this presentation.

I want to encourage y'all to continue to do the work.

It's going to be hard, but I think if if we come together and we start partnering up, we can make sure we get the funding that needs to get out there.

And I do want to see the bigger agencies that have the grant writers kind of umbrella or house or work in a cooperative with the smaller agencies that that can't apply for for much because they don't have the workforce.

So thank you for the presentation.

Thank you, Mayor, for the time.

And I just I look forward to working on that uh tabletop framework.

Thank you.

Chairman Gill.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um, and you know, going to some of the points councilwoman View Grand just explained.

Um, Eric, can you remind me what the total budget was for the fire and police departments?

You can ask me something.

I don't know if I'm just here, I should say.

So yeah, so the total budget for the police department was about 632 million, and the fire department is about 428.

Total public safety is over a billion dollars and makes up about 63.7 percent of the general fund.

Okay, so over a billion dollars, one with a B, right?

One billion dollars.

Yeah, with a billion.

So, you know, I just put that in perspective, right?

Because how much of the fire department, I think it was 80 some percent are doing medical calls or they're doing that type of first response, not necessarily fire.

And how much of SAPD time is spent on homelessness?

Um, and you know, going after young young kids that are committing crimes that are not in the boys and girls club, they're not a big brother big sister.

Um, I think that's a perspective that we need to have.

Um, we're talking about 20 some odd million dollars uh versus a growing uh billion dollar budget that we can never um go back on, it's not gonna decrease.

Um so I think that perspective is really important to consider that um and the work that these folks do.

And I was able to go to the press conference, I was invited out there and uh spoke, you know, without any plans to do so, but uh just amazing to see the amount of people that were there.

Um and when I met with the folks in SADSA, they said, you know, we're not here to ask you for more money necessarily right now, but we want to see at the table and helping uh craft how you all do this with the policies, right?

Because I to be honest with you, I've never worked in a nonprofit, I don't know what it's like.

Uh, but I've seen you all do the work and uh you definitely have to be a part of that conversation and and be here.

Um and so I will say, you know, I do support maybe I'm not I'm not the only one, but I do support longer than two-year contracts.

Um I think especially when you talk about homelessness, um, that is it that's a long-term problem, and I think a a three or even a four-year contract makes sense in some instances because the um market or the amount of nonprofits doing homeless services is is already small.

So it's not like there's a ton of folks doing that work.

Um so I think in some instances it makes sense to have a long-term project, especially as we're redeveloping that uh division and that department and what it's gonna do.

Um I do not favor sunsetting uh certain contracts.

I think there is no timeline you can put on ending homelessness.

Um what's the timeline on someone who's been a victim of domestic violence?

There's there's not a certain amount of time that person can get over something.

Uh and so to say that you're only gonna have a four years or three years with us, and then that's it for so many other years, I think is not um looking at the actual folks that they're trying to help and the long-term issues.

And I think some of these programs, especially the education ones, you know, that's every year there's kids that need to go into after school programs and Big Brother Big Sisters.

Every year there are kids that um you know have to do some of these programs.

Um I am hoping that at some point we can either uh with uh later on in an increased budget or maybe even reallocating uh within this framework, the senior services division of of the nonprofits because to the mayor's point, these cuts that are gonna come down uh are gonna be disproportionately affected um to them.

And they don't have the ability to get a second a job sometimes.

They don't have the ability to drive across town or somewhere to get something at a cheaper rate.

Um a lot of them are homebound, and you know, when kids go to school, they have again at least a couple meals there.

Seniors sometimes, you know, they go to senior centers specifically because of that meal that they get.

Um, and you know, how do we expand our senior centers at times when seniors are hurting even more?

The social security Medicare is not keeping up with inflation whatsoever.

Um and so they're gonna be hurt, and it's about a third of my district population.

So we have to do a little bit more on the homeless on the uh senior side, excuse me, um, and do what we can to help them.

And can you go back to the slide with what you were recommending or what you need some feedback on nine.

So uh I do worry about the 50,000 to 100,000 per year and what that uh means.

I I see the list here that you all provided of the nonprofits to get less than a hundred thousand.

That's quite a bit of stuff.

Um, and so I think you know, I actually was gonna make the point that Councilwoman Mesa Gonzalez made about maybe some of the lower end is a little bit less of a threshold to obtain uh versus you know 100,000 up to a million dollars.

Um I think there's room to do that, and of course we always have to measure those things, but I think that's important to have a lower lower barrier for folks to get into.

Um the other thing I was gonna mention is a couple folks uh nonprofits are doing some of the same work.

Like I saw a few that offer um utility assistance, right?

And that's something we have at the city, and so I don't know if they're reaching different folks to get utility assistance, or if there's a way we can hold that utility assistance money and have them market our program better because it doesn't make sense to me if we have a great program, which we have a waiting list for, right, and then we're giving that all step program also to several nonprofits, or like the financial counseling.

I mean, a lot of folks do financial counseling.

Uh, it seems like um almost everybody does now, so it it doesn't seem like we have to designate a program for that for several nonprofits.

Um and of course, I do believe that we have to really reevaluate what we're collecting from nonprofits as far as metrics.

Uh heard it to the campaign trail, heard it from a lot of folks I've been meeting with, right?

It it's uh a lot of metrics, and I don't even know actually what is collected, right?

I don't see that.

I'd like to see that what it is, um, but I think we need them to give some feedback about what's important to them and how they measure things, because you know, how do you measure a mentorship program success, right?

Or after-school program.

I mean, some of this stuff is you know, 10 years later, you see the result of that investment.

Um, so you're not gonna see a fully grown-out oak tree, right?

You're gonna see the sampling all the way up until that point.

So I think we have to be a little bit smarter and a little bit uh freer, I think, on how we measure success in some of these um nonprofits.

But again, I do think we need to extend the contracts in some cases if it's a two with another year option or three with a fourth year option for some of the other ones.

I personally think that that's beneficial to them uh while also allowing some sort of flexibility for us when uh new things come up, like meals on wheels.

So that's some of the feedback I have.

Thank you.

Okay.

Thank you.

And we do um, oh, I'm sorry, just real quick, uh offer the delegate agencies that are awarded, they provide us with the measures that they want to measure, you know, to go forward with.

We negotiate with them, you know, if it doesn't seem reasonable or or we want to make tweaks, but um they introduce the the measures and then we work with them.

What we'll do um moving forward is provide a set of metrics um in each category that that we see really provides that outcome that we're looking for and lets us compare across agencies uh the results that they're achieving.

So if I can just make one quick point, uh something they also mentioned was uh to that point, having a designated person for nonprofits at the city.

Um so I don't know if that's you or Jessica that could kind of fill that role, but uh that is something to kind of mention.

So thank you.

Melody, thanks for um clarifying that last point because I think um while there is interest in getting new players into the market, if you will, I think it's important that we're focused on what we care about, which is can you do the thing we need you to do, right?

Um so thank you for for clarifying that we're not gonna in any way diminish the service just to allow for more actors to be in the field.

You gonna say something, Eric?

Okay, thank you.

Um Councilwoman Castillo.

Thank you, Melody and Jessica, for the presentation and the work that you all do, uh, and as well as to the nonprofit providers, um, right?

It's within YAS title nonprofit, the work that you do is not profitable and relies primarily on fundraising from the private and public sector.

Uh, and as uh mentioned in the presentation beginning, right, having city and or county funding can help you all fundraise so the value that that investment in these resources bring, not just to um the city of San Antonio, but the county as well.

Uh and in terms of the conversation of sunsetting until we sunset, youth violence, domestic violence, food deserts, poverty in the city of San Antonio, I would be uncomfortable with the expectation of sunsetting the contracts of the services that the nonprofit providers provide.

Um again, these are uh investments that we know make a great impact, uh whether it's our seniors, youth, workforce development, um, these uh the councilman mentioned, right?

You can't necessarily gauge uh the impact in the short term, but we know this is going to help keep our communities safe and healthy.

So thank you all for the work that y'all do.

Uh, in terms of the conversation of term links, um, I agree with Councilman McKee Rodriguez in um minimizing or not going up to the four years rather, allowing us to have that flexibility with the changes that we're going to see, and we are seeing them quickly.

Uh and my expectation, as folks have mentioned, is that the nonprofits that we do select in terms of direction is they are in alignment with the UTSA violent uh plan, that they are in alignment with the SA forward plan, as well as an alignment um with uh any city initiated plan that's helping us meet those goals, right?

Um so just making sure that we're not steering off and also ensuring that we are, and I know there is communication with the community action plan as well, and those say that stakeholder group that meets and convenes and gives direction, um, their input's uh very valuable in moving things along.

Um again, I think it's important that we have that flexibility to meet the needs that council has set, whether it's an adopted plan that we've uh taken the initiative, the UTSA violent crime plan, right?

I did have my questions' concerns, but I think it's important we don't abandon the last phases of that plan.

If the commitment and argument is we need to move forward with phase one, um then we need to follow through in terms of having the resources available for phase three and four as well.

Um lastly, for the for the matching funds, um, I guess can you remind me, Melody, of what the proposed change was?

Oh, we didn't propose a change for matching funds.

We propose to stay at 50 percent.

Okay, and then uh while you're up there, Melody, I know this is a conversation that I had in our briefing as well.

Is the expectation that my constituent services team has that if we are funding a nonprofit and or delegate agency, if our constituent services team is connecting a resident to that service, then our expectation is that a service is delivered, right?

Uh, whether it's enrollment out of a program, completing application, uh, and not necessarily getting passed from nonprofit or organization to organization.

So, can you remind me or us about in terms of the contract what type of commitments will be in the language?

So we will add language again, starting with the RFP, and then through contracting processes where you know it it makes sense that agencies prioritize uh council referrals calls and um priorities.

All right, thank you, my lady.

Thank you, Mary.

Chair Core.

Thank you, Mayor.

I just wanted to chime back in to give feedback on the questions that were answered.

First, there's I heard there's a lot of discussion on metrics, and I too am very interested in this.

So I had actually asked for previous metrics as they compare to what United Way uses, because United Way does a lot and a lot of these organizations get funding from them as was mentioned.

And so we kind of looked at what they required, and they require a lot less, maybe almost half than what we had previously.

And so I looked at the new updates, and they look much stronger, much more streamlined.

Um, the question that I still have when I receive the document, and I don't know, Jessica, if you want to answer this, is I didn't see the actual goal, like there's not a number, quantitative number tied to the children and youth success goal.

I think that's very intentional.

So we're very cognizant we're using this collective impact model, especially when we have alignment with other funders around the same kind of strategy that we're proposing, but we want to be have recognition that we are contributing a very small portion of the overall funding that goes into that.

So no one investment is gonna move the needle on that indicator.

It's really gonna happen through collective impact.

Um, and so when we it's a backup slide here that we have.

So for each of our uh long-term outcomes, we actually have a community indicator that we're using to benchmark our data and look at that as we're making recommendations to council, whether or not we want to make changes to that, if there are continued investments that we think need to be made.

So, for example, in children and youth success under child abuse prevention intervention, we're looking at the number of alleged child abuse cases, and so we have that kind of target for every single funding priority that we have in areas where we have kind of aligned priorities with other community funders, particularly United Way, we're trying to align those indicators as well, where possible.

So, are we measuring those at a large scale across the community?

Do we do we have the number, like do we have a report that shows us where we are on this?

Some of that is included in our um status of poverty report.

We do, as Melody mentioned, have a project metric social demography team.

It would be very easy.

We we are collecting that internally for ourselves as we come to each process to make our recommendations to council.

It'd be very easy for us to provide that to council.

I think what we should do is take the metrics that each organization that is required to provide, like the number of uh students attending, etc., tie them up to what the after-school challenge goal is, so that we can see directly these organizations are supporting after this after-school challenge goal with these metrics.

So it makes it more aligned, um, so you can see your direct output as it relates to the outcome, right?

And then on top of that, the conversation about a partnership and the funding that they're receiving, oh, they're receiving is their funding is actually not for direct service, it's for data.

And they have a lot of capability to do data for us, so we can, I think rely on them to help us track some of these metrics because that's a part of I think the missing piece that you've heard is it's hard for us to understand how these organizations are supporting long-term uh crime prevention, but we know that uh college and career military readiness is directly related to crime prevention.

So making those connections, I think will better help us.

And the only thing with that, um, or just the caveat is so I think Councilman Mangia brought up that there are certain things that we're providing, like let's say in child abuse prevention and intervention education services.

So that's not gonna directly correlate to someone maybe not having a new CPS case opened, whereas a direct service would, which we also fund, but we will have metrics that are kind of proxy or early indicators of that, such as awareness of child abuse risk factors or willingness to report that we are having agencies track.

Absolutely, and showing that differentiation, I think would also be helpful.

So to the point around a partnership, I think we need to look at the work that they're doing and figure out if that delegate agency funding where they're designated, because they were designated there because they were not providing one of the services in the competitive RFP parts.

And so, right, they're not directly correlated to one of those components in the competitive RFP.

No, so they aren't they're the only agency that we're currently funding that doesn't provide direct services.

They're a data backbone.

Right.

So it'd be, I think we should look at where they're getting their funding, whether it's this is the right bucket, and how do we better leverage what they can provide for us, um, given that we you know bringing it up, but we don't have SA2020 SA 2020 anymore, tracking these at a large scale.

So, how can we figure out how to track better for the community and then how each funding, how each funder helps contribute to that?

Um, as far as the conversation around the uh five 500 or sorry, 50,000 to 100,000.

I also debated this.

We called some of the organizations that are receiving less than 100,000.

My worry was this would, like councilwoman said, that disenfranchise the smaller organizations that don't have as large budgets.

What I've realized though is the funding is not determined by how big someone's budget is.

So in some of the other um like grant programs that we do, we basically say like for arts, for example, arts funding is like you we don't give them more than X percentage of their actual budget.

That's not how they determine what their funding is received.

They basically fund based on how much money is there and what they ask for.

So if an organization knows that I have to ask for a minimum of 100K, they might ask for more, um, but they would have to get 100K.

It does, however, mean that less organizations get funding.

So that's the hard part.

If if you can give two organizations 75K, it's that's like you know, you're basically limiting the number of orgs that get funding.

So it's a tricky one to me, but the I've asked the organizations and they support it.

And so if they supported it, I feel like that would be my uh recommendation too.

And then I like uh council members' idea of up to four years, but give us the opportunity if we need to go back and do another RFP that we can um and if that needs to go to three because there was some discussion on that.

I do think knowing that they have a chance to re to re-get that to have that funding if they're meeting their outcomes gives them a stronger sense of security.

So they know as long as we're meeting our metrics, we're gonna be able to get the funding for up to three to four years.

I think helps them build that sustainability that has been shared as a need.

So um, I think I answered all of the the requests there.

Thanks, Mayor.

Eric, did you have something?

Two follow-up um items.

Um, one, so councilman on the up partnership.

Um as the as the data provider, um, I do anticipate and we've had conversations that our agreement with them needs to look differently in terms of frankly answering some of the questions y'all are y'all are asking.

Um, and it certainly needs to be aligned with the United Way and Gronkowski and a larger effort, and and um, and I think we could do a better job.

So I I do think that contract needs to be reset and focused on being able to answer some of the larger questions that frankly most of y'all have brought up.

So we're gonna work on that.

And and then lastly, um the regarding the term.

I mean, I'm I'm hearing that there's that there's the feedback, we're getting great feedback on the four-year term.

Um, but but I'm also hearing, and I wanted to say it out loud to make sure that I was hearing it right, that that you're not opposed to a longer term, but only with extensions that would be approved by council based on performance.

In other words, a one-year contract with two one-year extensions or a two-year contract with a one-year extension that just allows uh a port of entry for the city to check in on.

Um, because that that's that's a that's an option as well.

That allows, I think the agencies a little bit of certainty if all things stay the same, right?

If nothing changes, but also gives the city latitude, the council latitude, to adjust accordingly to uh things that may come up.

Okay, thanks.

Uh Melody, while we have the uh the slide up on um outcomes and funding priorities, and again, I go back to what we may learn um in the tabletop and in terms of things that maybe should be a higher priority in light of the impacts the results of some of those changes.

Um who developed these uh the the community indicators, the ones that were sliding, ma'am.

Yeah, so the community these are standard, I think some to some extent indicators on um child abuse and school readiness, you know, they come from various sources, whether it's CPS, police, or um the state education agency.

Okay, thank you.

Thanks for clarifying that.

Um, as we are anticipating, you know, it was I'm just looking at the youth ones here.

I mean the cuts and chip, right?

The cuts to SNAP, um, those may not be the indicators that we're most focused on, right?

As a result of the impacts of those cuts, um, which is why I think it we may actually um revisit this.

What I will do actually, um, let me invite the the next presentation, and then what I'm gonna do is come back around to my colleagues and get your input on whether you'd like to then as a result of what you think we can glean from that table top tabletop, um, share your thoughts on whether we can in fact um delay providing um um guidance um not on the other aspects of the slide, but just really on the timing of when we um issue this in light of um in light of uh the implications of of the tabletop.

So let me do that.

Thank you.

Thank you, Melody.

Yep, thank you.

Thanks, Mary.

Okay, so we'll move to the second presentation.

Uh and we've we've broken this presentation up into two sections, and we'll start off with Justina, who will cover um the current federal fiscal policy environment and high level, what's included in our budget in terms of federal dollars, and then uh we'll transition to uh deputy chief uh Brian O'Neill, who is the city's emergency management coordinator, um, and who will provide kind of an overview of the framework that we're proposing for the tabletop.

And we're gonna do it in two phases.

There's gonna be a lot of work done with the departments pre-exercise work uh later on this month in November, and we're scheduled to hold this session in December.

Now, um, although most of the folks in the room today are city departments that we have, we and you'll see in the presentation, we do believe uh that community partners will be helpful and necessary as we go through the exercise.

Um couple of the things uh one we have um we have great departments and and great leadership in the departments of either human services, uh metro health, uh housing, um, and and you know, the city is um the city deals and responds to crisis, um whether they're man-made, they're natural, or they're financial.

Um we do it well as an organization and and have a proven track record that we have had, and and you'll see the slide that you probably remember from the budget.

We have had some minor grant impacts to date.

Um, and and I wanted to share with you an example that's not really in the presentation, but I think is indicative of what I what I hope to get out of this exercise.

Um in the springtime, we had a um a uh COVID-19 vaccination grant that was scheduled to end middle of summer, and the Metro Health Department received notification that the federal government was cutting it off a little bit early.

And part of that grant funded our uh immunization clinic.

And um, you know, part of what the health department did, and the immunization clinic is clearly important uh to us uh and the community, and and what um Claude and the department did was go through an internal exercise to identify how they reallocate within their budget lower priorities to take care of a higher priority.

And so that's the important part of this effort.

That's one of the important parts of this effort, is how we prioritize and are primed, and it's something that frankly I think the departments always have to do well at.

I think we do we we do well at, but it's it's it's an exercise, and those muscles continuously need to be worked.

Um I also think that this helps us keep us as an organization in a ready start position, um, no matter what the influencing factors are, there could be a whole host of them, and um from that from that standpoint, I think it's good great organizationally for us to continue to prime that pump.

Um I I think I think it'll also result in in addition to the things the mayor talked about at the beginning of the B session.

It also fits into the lens and the work that's important for the council, um, and those two things at the end of the day, and it's not all of what you're responsible for, but and you talked a lot about it this afternoon so far, it's helping prioritize spending and resource allocation.

And in the midst of everything that we do, how do we continue to be sharp?

Um, and and uh you'll see this as we go through the presentation.

Uh Justina and and uh the departments have done a lot of work to prep and have been very thoughtful, uh, and we've included and I asked the the the emergency management office to lend their rigor uh to the to the effort and um uh looking forward to it.

So Justina, go ahead.

One second, actually.

Yeah, thank you.

Um Eric, I wanted to make sure as we as we look at this exercise, when we talk about giving ourselves options, a lot of that depends on us understanding the scale of the challenge before us.

So when Eric talked about, hey, we've got a plan to budget this 150 million dollar gap.

Great that we have a plan.

When we look here at the FY26 federal grants overview, we've got 153 million in federal grants.

So when we look at that potentially going away, that's another 150, right?

And so that's why this tabletop is so important for us to understand, you know, being able to prioritize within one department is great.

But when we see these cuts across several departments of a magnitude that we haven't seen previously at the same time that we all just talked about the implementation of the federal cuts, chip, Medicaid, Medicare, SNAP, Social Security.

So it's not just us closing our budget gap, we are doing that at the same time.

The people that are most vulnerable in our community will have less money in their pockets.

So there's two things that we're having to balance here as we prioritize where we may make changes in light of what we're seeing.

So thank you for putting some some thought into how we might do this when we might have some options, and then understanding the what may or may not get funded as a result of having to make those very difficult uh decisions.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Uh my name's Justina Tate.

I'm the budget director for the city of San Antonio, and as a city manager mentioned, today we will be presenting on a tabletop uh federal grant tabletop exercise and its framework.

This will be a two-part presentation.

First, I'll be providing an overview of the current federal funding landscape, then review the city the current federal grants that are included in the fiscal year 2026 adopted budget, and finally, I will touch on the city's federal grant review committee.

The second part of the presentation will be provided by Deputy Chief O'Neill, who will cover the tabletop exercise framework.

Today's dynamic federal fiscal policy environment continues to evolve.

For the past five years, municipalities, including San Antonio, have navigated through new spending to address community needs as a result of the pandemic, followed by strong revenue growth and also historic levels of federal aid.

However, that revenue growth has slowed, and the federal aid from the pandemic has has concluded.

Additionally, we've seen new funding proposals that could reduce federal support to states, local governments, and community partners.

Based on one of the administration's top priorities to reduce federal spending, we need to prepare for the impact of these reductions to the city's budget, as well as understanding the impacts to the community partners and vulnerable populations.

This is now more critical as the city's revenues has slowed, creating fiscal stress on the city's budget.

As a reminder, the general fund revenues for fiscal year 2026 grew by 0.8%.

This is not unique to San Antonio, as cities across the state are realizing the same strain on resources.

So as a result of the potential reductions to federal support, is important for the city to assess how federal funds are spent in the community and how San the San Antonio community may fare in the event of these changes.

We'll need to assess three areas.

The first is federal aid uncertainty.

So how federal spending reductions could impact the city's grant programs and federal aid to the state, county, hospitals, and nonprofit nonprofit partners.

Second is our infrastructure financing, how changes to infrastructure programs may require greater reliance on local funding mechanisms for our infrastructure projects.

And finally, service delivery.

How changes to federal safety net programs may increase demand for local social services, particularly in communities with low-income populations.

So in order to complete these assessments, the city, along with key partners, will conduct a tabletop exercise that focuses on reductions to federal funds that would impact the city and the community and possible responses to those reductions.

This tabletop will allow the city and partners to better assess risk of federal funding reductions, the impact to our vulnerable communities, and develop contingency plans.

Recommendations from the tabletop will be made to the city council for the city and community to remain resilient.

So I'll quickly go over the federal grants that are included in the fiscal year 2026 adopted budget.

The total federal grant included in the adoptive budget is about 153 million dollars.

This represents about 3.8% of our total budget of $4 billion.

These grant funds provide funding for 663 position that support these programs.

And the table on your right illustrates the grants by department.

And as you can see, the largest department, the largest department that receives federal grant is our human services at about 43.6 million dollars.

This next slide provides an overview of the types of services that are supported by our federal grants.

About one third of our grant supports child and youth services, with the next largest grant comprised of airport and our infrastructure at the airport, housing and homeless services, and public health.

These services represent about 85% of the total federal funding that the city anticipates receiving.

The remaining grants fund services for police and emergency preparedness, fiscal empowerment, workforce development, and senior services.

So on the next couple of slides, I want to briefly go over what is included in some of these programs.

So for our child and youth services, it's about approximately 50 million dollars that support these services.

And this includes our early head start and our head start programs, which provide services to over 3,300 children.

Our child care quality initiatives grant supports our child care providers.

So with this grant, we are able to certify child care providers, and since 2015, we've certified over 400 child care providers.

And finally, our women, infants, and children grant.

This serves about 35,000 women and infants and provides nutritious food, nutrition, education, and breastfeeding promotion and support to qualified women and their infants and children.

I do want to mention that there is other federal support that is provided to other agencies throughout the community.

This includes about 100 million dollars for other Head Start services, and this goes to about 22 other agencies that provide these services in the community.

Additionally, there are three other agencies that provide WIC, eight WIC clinics for the community.

Second is our housing services.

The budget includes about 22 million dollars of federal funding that support housing services.

Our housing services support affordable housing for low-income households and also housing stability.

There is an additional to over 220 million dollars for housing support that is provided through to other agencies throughout the community, and these agencies also support affordable housing and housing stabilization.

For homeless services, have about 7.4 million in federal funds included in our 2026 budget.

This provides support for shelter operations and support services for homeless and also provides funds to meet the housing needs of persons living with HIV and AIDS.

There is an additional 20 over 25 million that also support permanent housing as well as other housing services for the Bear County.

This includes our Medicaid waiver funding as well as infectious disease prevention and control, and also to help strengthen public health capabilities and workforce development.

There is an additional 20 million dollars that is provided in federal funds to support two other agencies that provide 40 clinics throughout San Antonio.

Now, in response to some changes at the federal level, the city developed an internal review process to react quickly if needed to new executive orders or changes in federal funds and federal grant funding.

This effort is co-led by Maria Villa Gomez and Les Provencio, and we meet on a weekly basis to review any changes from the federal government.

As changes in federal funding have been identified or new executive orders have been implemented, the committee has provided updates and laid out impacts of these changes on the city operation if there have been any.

Good afternoon.

I'm honored to uh be asked to construct and help facilitate this very important, uh very relevant tabletop.

Um my team and myself at the Office of Emergency Management take it very seriously.

So as Justina mentioned, I'm Deputy Chief Brian O'Neill.

I'm also the emergency emergency management coordinator for the city.

Okay, so tabletops based on conversations that happened before I stood up here.

I I understand that most of you have a firm grasp of what tabletops are, but for a quick uh rundown, tabletops are essentially where we bring together key partners within the city to discuss a scenario or situation, usually an emergency situation, uh, where we can uh collaborate and uh think critically and try to solve the problem.

It's a key uh event and preparedness measures.

Um for a fiscal tabletop, it's very important to realize that the departments that are gonna be participating need to have a strong understanding of their individual budgets prior to the tabletop.

Also, it's important to understand the time frames that unfold when it comes to fiscal crises.

So they could be weeks, months, or even years.

Um, so those things need to be taken into account before we do the actual tabletop, and therefore, there'll be two phases that we are proposing for the tabletop.

So, phase one, um, we need to do departments to do a deep uh analysis of their budgets, particularly how they are connected to federal funds and how they're tied to federal funds, any mandated services based on those those connections to federal funds, um, projected impacts if we lose those federal funds, uh, any continuity of operations.

So, how can that individual department bridge any sort of services with loss of funds?

Um cross-dependency identification.

So, this is where maybe a program is dependent on another program.

So, one program loses federal funds and other programs suffer.

So, we need to be able to identify those as well.

And then, of course, public communication is critical.

Um, we need to understand how we could honestly open openly and in unity provide a common message to our community.

Okay, so phase two, um, this is where the tabletop actually happens, and right now we're looking at the first couple weeks in December to do it over at our EOC with uh my staff facilitating it at the EOC and myself as well.

Um, so uh the pre-rook work findings will be will be given before we start.

That way, each department can hear from other departments and what challenges they may have had or what they have discovered prior to the tabletop situation.

Um, like most tabletops will we'll do injects with cascading events, uh, followed by questions, usually three to five questions to help uh kind of stimulate discussion and and critical thinking.

Um, we'll divide into cross-functional groups, maybe identify some groups that can work together and share services, come up with solutions, um, and then also agree on like a unified city city plan.

Ultimately, we're looking for lessons learned, identify in any required policy changes or budgetary actions, and then some follow-up planning processes as well.

So, this is an example scenario.

Um, and with injects and injects are common, there will be questions to all of these injects as well.

But I want to kind of focus on the objectives, which is information sharing, um, an impact assessment, like how is this going to impact?

Let's get a firm gris grasp of how these federal funds being lost would impact our city and our community.

Uh, collaboration is key, identifying any sort of gaps that we have.

And then strategic planning, so not just long term but also short term, like we lose some funding now, maybe it's lost forever.

So how do we proceed forward as with that was well with that?

So, as mentioned by Justina, some uh key partners and Eric, some key partners that will be involved.

This is part of that whole community approach and preparedness.

Um, we're all one community, we rely on each other, so as one's affected, so is the other.

So we all need to prepare together.

So these are some key partners we've identified.

Um others can be involved as well.

Here's another slide with key partners.

And then we've decided to bring UT School of Public Health in uh to validate what we're doing to provide subject matter expertise and the things that we're we're saying and discovering and talking about.

They could bring data and modeling for us and give us a true idea of the economic impact of things like uh reductions or loss of chip, Medicaid, SNAP, and Medicare.

So again, the outcomes of the tabletop, we're looking to really assess the risks of uh federal fund reductions, uh, get a good grasp of what what the risk is and what's actually going to happen, assess the impact on vulnerable communities.

We know that's who's gonna be affected the most, and then finally develop planning and recommendations for the mayor and city council uh to move forward on and the next steps is to get your input, adjust the framework, and then pass it off to city managers to move forward.

Thank you very much.

Um I recognize there may not have been enough time to collect it and then provide it.

One of the things I I did want to make sure at least we had here, and you can provide it afterwards, unless it's maybe in a backup slide.

Um, but when we look at these groups that are gonna be most impacted by these federal cuts, do we have numbers um for already those in our community that are recipients of CHIP or SNAP or SNAP?

Uh maybe she's got that.

Okay, go ahead, Maria.

Uh yes, Mayor and Council.

So we started the collection of that data, which some of the um federal workers not being available to confirm some of the numbers.

Our Metro Health Department and DHS um internal departments will be finalizing the data.

We we have some of it, just do you want to do the due diligence to make sure we're giving you accurate data?

So we'll send that in a follow-up memo.

Great.

Thank you, Maria.

Did you want to say something, Eric?

Yeah, it's unfortunate that we are.

Yes, that's I mean, this is exactly why we need to plan, right?

Uh, unfortunately, we did not think our federal partners would would be shut down.

Um, thank you for for laying that out.

Um, for those that haven't um provide uh participated in a in a tabletop.

Um, you know, it it really is as as simple as some of the things that we talked about earlier.

Um and some of this, I think we also understand as a as a council will help us understand where we may have more, we have greater need, right?

As um councilwoman Via Grand just talked about, yeah, what we expect to see.

Is there gonna be all of a sudden a mud uh a spike right at Lion Center or in other places as a result of this, just given the makeup of of certain communities?

Um so in in my mind, as I was talking with um with with Eric and with others about what this looks like.

It can be very simple, um, folks, in terms of, you know, hey, if we lose 50% of health funding and 50% of human services funding, how does that impact seniors?

How does that impact youth?

Um, and how would how might that impact folks at a certain percentage of you know uh AMI, right?

Keep it real high level, and to the extent we'll have that data that Maria is talking about by district, then we can also drill down and say, you know what, this is what it looks like in district one, this is what it looks like at district nine, this is what it looks like in district four.

Um, and again, this is not the end all be all.

We're not trying to, you know, get understand, we're not gonna going to be able to understand every aspect of this, but even in those scenarios, we can get a good grasp of of what that is going to look like and the impacts of that in our community.

Um, because you know, some of the things that was pointed out by by Justina and the loss of some of these federal grants, it's not just the four million dollars uh loss in child care quality initiative.

It's now okay, so we we're not um um supporting those child care providers, which means those parents aren't going to work, right?

Or we're not funding that uh, I mean, relatively small amount of money for the syphilis testing.

Oh, by the way, we're still seeing the highest levels of syphilis infection in our country that we've seen since 1950, right?

And and like what does that ultimately mean?

So those are the types of things we can qualitatively, I think, include um as part of the tabletop in terms of hey, we identify this, we're gonna pin a pin on pin in it, and and kind of come back to it.

But the tabletop has helped us understand these are the immediate things we're gonna try to address, um, and these are the other things that we're going to know we need to keep an eye out and work with either the county or with our some of our community partners to also to to keep to get a sense of of how things are going.

I will also say when we look at the public health piece, of course, this is where a lot of the funding is is under threat.

The comms piece is so important here, not only as we're looking at the loss of of money, but we're also unfortunately seeing um increases in misinformation and disinformation um in the public health space in in particular.

So I would ask that as we think about scoping the the scenario, we account for our communications um expertise.

And this is not only for for Dr.

Uh Jacob, right?

This is for for CNE, kind of in how all of us uh on this council think about communicating and getting some of that information out so that it's it's timely um and and accurate.

Okay, uh let me turn it over to my Eric.

Did you want to say anything?

Okay.

Anybody though?

Yeah, chair Chair Mungia.

Thank you, Mayor.

I appreciate this uh discussion on the framework.

Um this looks really good.

I would say, and I guess this is not um wholly indicative of all the partners, but definitely adding a school district that's on the south side, I think is important.

I know thankfully you have Edgewood and NSAISD, but whether that's Harlandale, South Sound, or Southwest, I think um that area of town needs to be represented in this also.

And then I think what would be great is and I appreciate the uh district breakdown, but also the demographic breakdown that we anticipate.

Um so you know, a lot of times when things get cut or disproportionately affect people in society, you know, usually women of color typically hurt the most by some of the things.

So I think we need to understand in each district, you know, the demographics of people are gonna get hurt the most, and then you know, go to those community partners who help serve those populations and say, okay, if this is to happen, you know, the people that you serve are gonna be it's gonna be twice as many clients requesting help that you have now.

Um that way they are understanding of what is to come, and then also we're understanding so that if we need to amend our our uh nonprofit funding, how that goes.

Um so I think that's important, and then I don't know, I feel like someone's maybe missing on the healthcare side of it too.

I'm thankful that you have the Center for Health Empowerment in South Texas, University Health Methodist.

I'm not sure if there's maybe room for another one, Baptists or even some of the um healthcare foundation folks that invest money in and health care priorities.

Um, because if some of the top two things are gonna be um DHS and Metro Health, that's you know, gonna be a lot of health-related things.

Uh and I know that the airport was capital, um, but they I think they were the number two recipient of federal funds.

So I don't know if it necessarily belongs in this tabletop, but how that affects the airport.

I mean, I know that's not necessarily compared to this a huge priority because we still have flights and all that happening, but just how it affects the growth of that uh and our plans for that.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair, uh, for the good point on on uh making sure we're adequately accounting for certain communities uh like women of color.

So Eric, I'd specifically ask that we ask um Planned Parenthood to participate.

Um Chair Mukhe Rodriguez, thank you, uh Mayor, and thank you for initiating this conversation.

I'll um overall I think the framework is fine, and I'm willing to uh experience it as is.

And um, I guess just the what's important to me is that when we have conversations and exercises like this, that the feedback that you're looking for is made clear up front as as quickly as possible.

So when we're having the discussion, we don't get off track and we don't uh get so focused on big issues that we don't intend to address, and that we're focused very clearly on some tangible action steps and what we expect of of city staff.

Um, for example, one of the things that stands out to me, if you could go to slide eight is that that is 663 positions that these are all city employees?

663 people who will now be out of a job, that's 663, potentially households that are without a major source, if not all of their household income, and what are the outcomes of that?

And so, do we have uh at the ready, do we know what positions exist within the city that have vacancies that we could move people into relatively quickly and easily, and uh what kind of direction or what kind of what would you need in order to accomplish something like that, and how could those positions be utilized to accomplish some of this?

I guess a part of that is also what percentage of that budget is um not just staff how much of that is programming versus salaries and administrative costs.

I think that's important information to have.

Um and I think just looking at this slide, just based off of I think a list like this should, I mean, with some exceptions, right, should inform even the categories that we use for our delegate agency funding process, um, especially those that have already been impacted or cut in some way, shape, or form.

Um, but I look forward to the conversation and um interested in the rest of my colleagues' feedback.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you, councilman.

Um council member Spears.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um I want to echo what my colleague uh councilman McKee Rodriguez said.

I I I said it a little different.

I wanted to see a prioritized list of essential versus discretionary grant funded services, just to help me understand the impacts there, potential other funding sources.

Um I wanted to and I agree with Councilman Mangia about demographics as well as by district as well.

And I wanted to also see if there's potential for reallocation of other funds, even fether other federal funds into certain areas that are losing the funding.

And the likelihood or potential for the return of that funding, or if we reapply and are able to get it, the likelihood of getting that later.

Um, if I know some of these are completely going away potentially, but um just potential avenues forward for additional funding.

And what that looks like.

And that's it.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember.

I I think um when we're looking at some of these federal grants, those are uh they're not necessarily there's not a lot of flexibility, right?

We're given to them for a very specific cause.

Um, I'm sure the layout where we have some flexibility, but I I don't expect there to be just a ton, which is why we really need to look at, hey, if this goes if the funding goes away and the service goes away, what is our potential commitment to just continuing to provide those things?

And then what might it cost us um as a as a city to provide that?

Um Chair Galvan.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh thank you for putting this together.

I'm really excited to kind of take this dive into it.

I think it's helpful for of course our budget conversations next year, um, and trying to understand a bit more too that's not just gonna be right our own deficit, but uh the grant deficit that'll also be created within our city budget.

Um I think something that uh I mean I feel good with the framework, it feels pretty comfortable to me.

I think I definitely agree with the point by Councillor Mugia on getting a Southside School District uh involved in this conversation.

Uh I also have some of my thoughts with the education opportunities committee, making sure that we have everybody at the table as much as we can.

Uh because it is important though.

And so I also want to want to mention uh not another partner necessarily for another school district, because I think we can easily get to all 16 quickly.

Um, but maybe either Region 20 or the Bear County Education Coalition, who can kind of help maybe be kind of that one voice for a lot of them, uh, so it's not everybody and too much of too big of a table.

Uh, but also if it's worthwhile to get everybody there, that works too.

Um something I I think is important too, of course, is maybe even just laying out what funding specifically uh we're capable of as a city, what things that we currently have within our budget to do this work, uh, where can we move X dollars from from this department to do this thing, uh, to then create this amount of either housing units or uh assist this many uh homeless individuals or uh adjust uh reduce this amount of STDs in our our city, whatever it is, um identifying the kind of dollar amount that's needed to do that work, uh not just to show up this work, but to really address the larger issue.

I think the same point on delegate agencies, right?

What is the total cost that we need here?

And that may be more difficult to fully uh the fully encapsulate, but I think it's worthwhile to see how far do we need to go to get address this issue in our city uh so that we have that information to not only figure out within our city budget but to work with our partners for um or work with our partners with um to better address the issue overall, whether it is within the health department or health issues or within homelessness in our city or within housing needs in our city.

Um I think having that dollar amount either presented to us or whether it's in follow-up memos, I think would be worth a while to really get us to where what do we need to do here and what's the the long-term strategy for it, right?

Not just for 2027, but it's the future.

Is it gonna require um using tourist dollars in some form?

Is it gonna require um tax increase or decrease conversations?

Is it gonna require tax exemption conversations?

Um, where are these pockets of money that we can look at uh to fundamentally get to this this issue?

And so we can talk to our residents too about it, right?

That it's not just um we're moving this money around for this or that for fun.

Uh and I don't think people think in that way, but nevertheless, right?

Uh that these the funding that we're looking for is to do this and effectively address this issue, right?

Um we talk about homeless folks on the street, though.

gonna require um tax increase or decrease conversations it's gonna require tax exemption conversations um where are these pockets of money that we can look at uh to fundamentally get to this this issue and so we can talk to our residents too about it right that it's not just um we're moving this money around for this or that for fun uh and I don't think people think in that way but nevertheless right uh that these the funding that we're looking for is to do this and effectively address this issue right uh we talk about homeless folks on the street though we're not looking to just have money to grow to this organization to do this thing uh but to break that kind of that thought process and say no this is a help this many people and if we get these folks out the street and we get these folks into this housing units we have the housing units available from this funding problem set problems done for the most part right I think that's worth uh that actually that's within this I it's gonna think come out of this anyway but I think just those exact dollars would be helpful um and that coordination too right what what's the policy recognition we need to have for ourselves as well as for our partners in the area if it's the county the state uh the better address this work um what do we need to do together to get to that point right is it um land use conversations is it UDC uh conversations uh for both us and the county or other partners too um that's what I think I really want to see come out of this too so that way we can make those decisions a bit more clearly um especially around budget conversations um but I'm excited to have this overall and I think that'll again kind of come naturally but that's where my focus is the what's the dollar amount to address the issue that's it yeah let me let me just um if I may um where we find the money is kind of up to us right um part of this though is helping us understand just how bad some of these problems may be and so Eric's plan to care to to cover the gap that we know of of 150 million if we were to add even half of a loss of these federal grants which is 75 and a half right 75 million and a half all of a sudden Eric's plan may not make any sense at all right and so that that's what we have to kind of wrap our heads around here when we answer some of these questions and look at his plan but then recognize there may be other things that we we cover down on.

And maybe to your to your point right we're not we're not covering all of the four million dollar in the child care quality initiative we're not funding all of the money that goes to housing stabilization but we are looking at what is manageable in light of if we say hey here are our red lines we're still not going to raise property taxes.

We're still not going to go from four to five at SAWs you're right like those are the kinds of conversations that we need to have but understanding the scale of the problem is really what we're going to do to do here and then we can say all right we still think that's X, Y, and Z is important now Eric help us go find that money.

Okay that's where we're at.

Yeah no I think that's I absolutely agree with you and I think my point is just figuring out what's the scale to of the cost right and what are the recommendations that we need there if it is um things that even are the red lines right let lay it out for us so we can know what we need to do there.

That's what I at least would like to see.

And Mirror I wanted to add that you know part part of and in the the chief could answer this we're not gonna come out of this exercise with a lot of answers.

We're we're gonna probably come out with a lot more questions.

And and I want to make sure that that you all know that I mean those are all really good questions council member that we need answers but but the but efforts like this are designed to stress break generate more questions identify bigger gaps and it's just it it's it's it's really important for the organization to know about those things it's really important for you all to know in the grand scheme of things and and I just wanted to make sure you knew we weren't when we come back in January or December we're not gonna have a lot of questions or answered.

Let me also I mean I'm making some assumptions about um about what people understand are going to come out of this a very real possibility of this could be as a result of that grant going away X number of people are going to lose this service if we then as a council say that's unacceptable to us okay Eric if we wanted to do this as a city how much would it cost?

And then you and then Eric is going to say this is how much it's gonna cost and then we make a determination of do we want to pay for that out of our current budget?

Do we want to um do we want to take other steps to cover that in the same exactly right in the same way that again many folks were able to point to that analysis that said hey we need this many cops this analysis will help us say actually if that again we said we wanted this many people to provide that service that we said was still important even though federal money goes away so this then allows us to look at where is all the need in light of what is some of the the bills that we know of and where we might need to go um ask Eric to go uh identify some options for us to fund these things okay uh chair core please I just sorry just wanted to clarify I is was the reason why the Southside districts weren't on there is because we're not uh directly um doing their head start yes okay okay so if we I mean obviously like hear their perspective who is their head start provider no who's the head start provider 20 region 20 so maybe it'd be good to also have region 20 present since there and is there another head start provider or just those two there's eight oh sorry go ahead sorry Rebecca Florida education program administrator there's eight total um head start providers throughout our county okay so it might be good to include them I think the head start I'm just gonna the head start program is the biggest one that I think is the biggest chunk of that children and youth funding and I think I mentioned it during budget season we're like I'm I'm really worried about I think Head Start is a great tool for our community I um have very little hope that it will be continuous

to clarify i is was the reason why the south side districts weren't on there is because we're not uh directly um doing their head start yes okay okay so if we i mean obviously like hear their perspective who is their head start provider start provider 20 region 20 so maybe it'd be good to also have region 20 present since there and is there another head start provider or just those two there's eight oh sorry go ahead sorry Rebecca Florida education program administrator there's eight total um head start providers throughout air county okay so it might be good to include them I think the head start I'm just gonna the head start program is the biggest one that I think is the biggest chunk of that children and youth funding and I think I mentioned it during budget season we're like I'm I'm really worried about I think Head Start is a great tool for our community I um have very little hope that it will be continued and so I don't know whether or not that's something that we should maybe discuss in the educational opportunities committee in terms of how do we fill in that gap there I mean theoretically there still is 1882 funding at the state so if there was a way that our our schools could apply for H2 funding and we use our head start providers as that I mean there might be some kind of creative way to keep that going otherwise I don't know how we fund two teachers in those classrooms because that's the biggest part of their model.

So you know I'm I'm again I'm looking forward to this conversation but the thing that I worry about is we have this we have this uh tabletop exercise we say we want to fund I I'm being the first one that's gonna be like we're of course we're gonna fund Metro health of course we're gonna fund these things but where do we get the money from and so I I have a hard time just saying like let's set the things that we want to do without knowing where we pulled the funding from so that's just my um that's my challenge with the whole conversation I feel like it's gonna leave us all more frustrated than well yeah yes that's right that's exactly right but I think the clo the more that we are having these conversations in January right and not July the better prepared that we'll be able to be and and frankly we then we know more right we know more about um what we are concerned about so as as Eric is monitoring our budget and we're seeing some of the other actions at the federal level we have a better idea of of where we can where we can pivot um but not the thing is I mean this is this news is not going to get better as time moves on so the best thing we can do to help ourselves is to reduce the uncertainty ask the questions check our assumptions and then already be very thoughtful about as we're going through each of these briefings who gets funding who may not get funding you know as we I mean think of budget session it's it's budget it's budget season now yeah right think of it that way I don't disagree with you and the my only response is that we had a previously a discussion last year about adding funding to a department and the debate always was okay where are we cutting money from to um to fund that because everybody can get on board with like yes funding a specific thing but or not maybe not everybody but you know um and I think you remember what I was talking about and the question was like well what are we gonna cut then what are we gonna cut if we want to fund this request so anyway so that I will uh I'll let you talk Eric I'll just add council councilwoman that that slide I mean that there has been a lot of tumultuous swirl in the water since earlier this year um but when you look at the grants that we that have been impacted so far um a couple of grants health grants that were scheduled to end anyway ended sooner uh the big one was really the solar program that really hadn't gotten off the ground um so we haven't really been impacted and that goes back to that earlier conversation in the year but but being prepared for it and being exercised for I mean we the the departments just went through a pretty massive exercise to balance two years worth of budget so they can handle it it's making sure that we include partners in in terms of community output so will it will it happen I don't know federal cycle federal funding cycles go up and down anyway and so we should always be prepared for it um and and so um don't let us go through the steps right don't go to the last page yet but but I think it's making sure that we're all prepared and and I think the mayor's the mayor uh the mayor's points uh earlier are are right on I mean we don't know it's just it's just being prepared and there won't be any easy answers that's okay heard thanks Eric the last question really quick is what were the two positions Andy in your department that are be on there it's the city attorney's office the two CDBG yes right two CDBG CDBG attorneys they fund they help uh support the housing uh component of the C D BG funding okay thanks mayor um to that point while we might not be super clear on the federal grants that are going to be cut and when they may be cut the cuts to chip snap social security Medicare Medicaid those are coming it's not an if that's a it's a when those are coming yeah and that's one of the reasons why we're at we've asked the UT system the UT health um uh program to use their utilize their health economists to help us frame out the the the the numbers that that the mayor was asking Maria around beyond the numbers what does that really mean and and UT Health has agreed to help uh kind of frame that out as we go through this exercise we all better understand it Councilwoman Castillo

Those are coming.

Yeah, and that's one of the reasons why we're at we've asked the UT system, the UT Health program to use their utilize their health economists to help us frame out the numbers that the mayor was asking Maria around beyond the numbers, what does that really mean?

And and UT Health has agreed to help uh kind of frame that out as we go through this exercise.

We all better understand it.

Councilwoman Castillo.

Uh thank you for the presentation.

Uh I feel like there's been a handful of budget cycles in which we have the budget goal setting conversations, whether it's NHSD, Department of Human Services, and Metro Health, the conversation about the need to support these departments through the city's general fund to help prevent and prepare for instances of federal cuts.

Uh and what we know, right, in terms of what's being requested.

Um, I think the councilwoman laid it out on the previous item, right?

We're we we know the districts, the zip codes and the demographics that are going to be disproportionately impacted by cuts and or changes to federal programs.

I think to the point of councilwoman Dr.

Coors, I think we need a plan in terms of what are the safety nets that we have that we need to build and or scale up because we we we know the data.

For example, district five is home to one thousand nine one thousand nine hundred and thirty-seven public housing units, and while there's not necessarily uh federal cuts, right?

There's potentially changes to the amount of time that a tenant could stay within public housing, then can result in potential homelessness encampments, public health issue.

So I think in terms of looking at um, you know, what are some of those policy changes and how they're gonna impact the city of San Antonio is where there's also value in exploring grateful to see opportunity home here and part of the partner uh in the presentation as well.

Um but I think you know, part of the the expectation is uh again going back to ultimately we're gonna have to identify where to fund what we find, uh what we already know are going to be risk and areas that are going to be impacted, right?

Um so it's just I I think we we know the areas, and I think we just need to have the budget policy conversation about how we fund these departments, and I think we just need to get to that part first in terms of how can we change the policy to support NHSD, Metro Health, uh, and so forth in terms of general funding rather than relying primarily on uh federal grants.

Um, and as Eric mentioned, right, this is fluctuating and changing, um, but I do think there is value in also exploring some of those policy changes that are also going to have impacts.

Those are my comments.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um who is it?

Oh, sure.

Um did you sign in?

I don't we don't have anybody else.

You have somebody else?

No, I sign room one.

Oh, okay.

Chair Viegran.

Um thank you.

Uh I'm in agreement with uh Councilman Galvan.

I want to see uh uh nothing's off the table.

I need to see what it would mean to um raise property taxes, increase fees in terms of what that would happen, how that would happen with the budget.

I while I while there are lines, of course I know all of us don't want to cross.

I think in terms of the federal grants and where we look at children and youth, um, and the amount of dollars that we're looking at and the amount of uh employees that we're looking at, we need we need everything there as we go through this exercise.

I don't want to not have it there while we do this exercise because I think this the federal grants tabletop exercise is gonna be one of many we're going to have to do uh as we look and move forward in this budget because we've entertained a zero balanced budget mentality, so uh or hybrid, as you might say.

So let's go ahead and do this, but bring me what it would cost to raise fees and to raise property taxes, because to do this with half the information is just gonna cause more work later.

Um I think we um we also need to be ready to pivot when the federal government decides they they are going to give out grants, but what that is going to look like, and we need to be ready with programs and um initiatives and and policies that will get us money from the federal level, and if that means we um we do something we hadn't done before or considered before, like going like going uh high density in a view shed area that we swore ourselves we never go high density in, then we do that.

Um so I think that that is something we kind of need to look at in the future.

We understand that our priority is to represent the um citizens of San Antonio and our district, but I think at this rate, as we go through this process, what we're trying to do is continue to make the city go forward, and uh we know at this time our federal grants are at risk, but we know that in the future it could be other circumstances that caused it.

I think the city did an excellent job with the pandemic and COVID and making the pivots and the changes that they needed to make sure this city stayed um alive, basically and open for business.

But I think as we move forward here, we're facing something that we have never faced.

It doesn't mean other nations haven't faced these same challenges, but I think we need to be thoughtful because there are um other states and other cities um within this state that will not be ready like San Antonio needs to be ready.

So thank you for bringing this forward.

I look forward to seeing it, but I I would prefer everything on the table so we can work with that, and then from there we can decide what are non-negotiables.

Thank you.

Councilwoman Mesagonzala, thank you.

Um just quickly, uh essentially to what uh Councilwoman Via Gram was saying, just moving forward moving forward, making sure that um we see all the pathways right of mitigating these losses.

Um I don't think we have that now, but that's the purpose of this.

Um I also is is that's more so on just internally within the department with within the executives for them to go through to then set take that to the tabletop, or is that so for phase one that you so we anticipate to also be working with some of our partners to be able to prepare the data for the tabletop exercise?

So it'll be our department directors working with uh the partners that you saw on the screen.

Okay, and then um I'm sure there's gonna be a legal strategy around some of this too.

So have we kind of talked through that or just when these cuts start coming or if they start coming and other cities uh as you well know, uh well, I uh councilman, we're already looking at some of the different various language uh language we're getting on some of these grants in terms of the assurances, so we have a team in that includes the city attorney's office that are looking at that, and we'll certainly be involved in any strategies as we look to fill in the gaps in terms of what legal leeway we have to address them.

Okay, thank you.

Uh I think that is one thing I don't I don't know if this comes up here.

I was at a event earlier, councilman and I were at event an event earlier, excuse me, a lunch, and uh Samco is letting us know Vic Boyer that all MPO money is federally, it's all federal funds, right?

That come through the state, but I don't know if it's for this tabletop or if there's another tabletop that that would fit in just to examine those impacts.

I'm sorry, go ahead.

Um councilman uh councilwoman, I was gonna mention that one of the I think it was maybe slide three or four, where we say one of the the key um areas that we need to be mindful is infrastructure and the fact that if there are changes to funding at the federal level, there's gonna be more reliance on local funding.

We uh at this point in that plan to include infrastructure and this tabletop, it was more related to uh social service, uh, but that is something that that we can um have a separate discussion.

Okay, and then can we consider uh philanthropy in this group of partners?

You saw them here earlier today but just a philanthropy arm just to kind of piggyb on the conversation we were having earlier with delegate agency funding, we see an increase on the services that you know the 14 million, I think they said in uh services for this quarter alone.

So is there can we include them in this tabletop exercise?

So for sure we're gonna have nonprofit, uh, but we can explore potentially those organizations as well.

Okay, but then the nonprofit council will be part of the tabletop exercise.

Okay.

Yeah, if we can look at the philanthropy, I think that would be helpful.

Um that's all for now.

Thanks.

Chairman Gill.

Thank you.

This is a follow-up question, uh, specifically on the airport but other departments.

With those positions that are grant funded, are we obligated to keep any of those after the federal funding has gone gone away?

Um, they're all grant funded, and when those employees are hired, they're hired with the under with the understanding um and the acknowledgement that their fund their that their funding is tied to outside funding from the SAPD officers.

Okay.

And those are probably the only positions listed of the 663 that are required to keep on after the grant.

That is correct.

Yes.

Just wanted to clarify that.

Thank you.

That's all.

Has everyone spoken who'd like to speak on this topic?

Okay.

Go ahead.

Thank you, Mayor.

I just wanted to say really quick, uh, echo definitely Council of Mr.

Gonzalez's point about the philanthropy and the foundations uh in our city.

I think it just would be helpful thinking about the estimated costs here.

Uh not only of course with the nonprofits seeing what they can uh take on, but also the philanthropy uh seeing what they can take on as well.

Uh that may help us with our cost estimates on what the services we're looking to show up and or provide.

And I think you know it's a stressful time.

Uh I think we had a really good conversation today overall.

Um but I think I always lean on hope in history and thinking about how cities were formed and what things we've done in our city before, particularly here, and that there was a point in our lives where uh or in our our city's history where we didn't have uh a fire department, we didn't have law enforcement publicly available, we didn't have trash pickup, and we had to make our city to leaders at the time had to make decisions and moves to make that happen to be publicly available for our city.

And so it's always tough to have the conversations tough to look at the red lines there, but some things have to change, and that's how we get some of these services that we rely on today still.

So I'm hopeful that with this work and with the budget conversations we have, uh that that'll still come out in that way.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um has everyone spoken who'd like to speak.

Okay.

Can we go to your uh the next steps, the timeline slide?

I want to make sure um because that wasn't in our slide, just so we folks are clear on and what they need to provide by what time it's the last slide.

Just tell me which colleagues, uh please make note of the uh the request to provide input.

Um and as mentioned, um, one of the ones that I'll be putting forward is the very simple one that I mentioned earlier, right?

Which is if we lose 50% of health funding and 50% of human services funding, what would that look like for our seniors, for our youth, and for those that a you know you all make a determination about what the appropriate AMI might be.

That's that's the one scenario, and then help us understand what that might look like by district.

That is a sufficient scenario.

It doesn't I just gonna again want to give you a sense of of what's um acceptable in terms of um of the feedback, doesn't need to be any more um scientific than that, if you will.

It just gives us a good sense of of the things that are top of mind for you and your districts um as we to make to make sure that this is as as useful as it can be.

So uh please make sure you provide that to uh the city manager by the 20th, and then we'll have a final framework for consideration later that week.

Okay.

Um great, thank you.

This is not meant to um really appreciate um the the conversation.

Actually, I said I do one more thing, which was um just get everyone's kind of final sense of if all were were comfortable with waiting to provide Melody guidance um on the um on the priorities for the nonprofit funding until we had the results of the of the tabletop.

Um what that would do is uh um extend those recipients that are currently receiving it from eight months to 12 months and then allow um those uh those folks to receive the uh to receive the not profit funding starting on one October instead of one June of next year.

Is that correct, Melody?

Have I explained that correctly?

Okay.

Okay, thank you.

So um just to as we just kind of go around again, I'll ask if there's a any questions on on doing that or if there's any issue.

Okay, let me just make sure any anything from Chair Corps.

I I think Mary, I'd be it'd be more useful if Eric summarizes rather than going around if we're well what I I didn't hear from all the the colleagues though, but if that's how you if that makes the most sense, I just want to make sure that's the right thing.

I don't think we should be correct.

I think that would be the more appropriate way.

Sure, go for it.

Eric so part of the question is is based on the secondary presentation.

Um I'm looking for some feedback from you all about whether or not we should delay the the delegate agency RFP until we go through the the tabletop and provide that to council.

Um and is as um as the mayor mentioned, um she's mentioned it twice in the uh today.

And is as um as the mayor mentioned um she's mentioned it twice uh today um if we do that we would reschedule we would adjust our schedule for the delegate agency um and likely award 12 month contracts for those for those agencies that were the that got an eight month contract we would do a 12 month contract do the solicitation in the spring and bring it to to council going forward in the fiscal year 27 budget.

So the question is do you uh do you have any feedback about the timing of the solicitation for delegate agency Chair Vegan I yeah, when when was Melanie's item on the agenda for um I think it was coming to council on May 8th.

Yes, May for final December 1st, May, May uh of next year.

If you could um get I I would I would want to see a meeting, I I want to kind of weigh like um the groups, the organizations, and and the months.

So if we could get a meeting beforehand, I'm I'm not opposed to that idea because it's not coming till May 8th, but I'd like to uh talk as a council member more with Melody, and in the meantime, we'll be going through our tabletop exercises, so we'll have an idea of where we're at.

So um yeah, as long as it's I thought it was agendized for like December.

No, so we're we're scheduled to do release based on the schedule we gave you earlier.

The Mel, the the RFP is going out in December first.

December 1st.

So um it's not like it's going out this week anyway.

We we've got a little bit of time.

We need to prepare all the documents though.

Yeah, I I'd I'd like to have a meeting before uh we we decide either way.

So but yeah, uh just with the agencies that we have going and then the RFP process.

Um and part of it is because for some nonprofits, they're like, well, if I we just know that there's some nonprofits that are kind of waiting and have been in anticipation of this RFP coming out and what that would look like.

So um yeah.

Um councilwoman, if I may, uh maybe this helps a little bit.

So the the budget ordinance authorize contracts for eight months.

If you will choose to extend those an additional four months, then that action has to come back to the full council in an A session so we can amend what you approve in the budget ordinance so that way those agencies know that they're getting funded for the entire fiscal year 26, and then the process for funding for fiscal year 27 will be done at a later date, and we can come back, you know, after the tabletop results are discussed by the council.

So either way, we're gonna have to bring this back to an A session.

Uh if the council decides to postpone the solicitation process and amend those contracts to add four months of additional funding, we need your authorization to do that at an A session.

Okay, then we should probably uh give time for Melanie to uh Melanie to uh talk with council members regarding that because that could be a very interesting A session.

So maybe maybe this will be helpful.

What we'll do if we do that, we need to do a side by side so that you see the moving pieces and the timeline associated with with both options, and we can do that.

Chairman Key Rodriguez.

Thank you, Mayor.

And uh it's an interesting question.

I'm wondering why the four-month extension versus two months, when do we think I guess it sounds like we'll have way more questions at the end of the um at the end of the tabletop exercise, but we will have a better idea of the scope of the problem and all of the areas that are uh of high priority for us and the areas that are most likely to be impacted by anything that happens at the federal level.

I'm wondering though, could we just delay the request for the RFP opening until February or so and then changing maybe the period between the RFP closing and the A session that we approve the items?

I just don't know, does it have to be from E to 12 or can it be can we just go to 10 months?

So it's two months delay.

So um we haven't had a lot of time to think through this.

We um I I think we had an indication that this was a potential issue that may come up.

Um I'd say no, because that means funding would rather than start on June 1st would start on August 1st.

The council doesn't meet in July.

We're working on budget.

So you know um I I don't know if we've had really had a chance to kind of think through can we squeeze down somewhere in the in the solicitation process and still hit it um if we delay um the the solicitation um but but no i i i think i don't think it makes a lot of sense to do it with two months left we've we remember from the agency standpoint they thought they were gonna respond to an RFP last spring.

We said no, we still are gonna extend, we're gonna do eight months, and so we need to give them notice um and and I would say uh getting two months of funding would not be probably um worth their time.

I guess the um the question that I have that I think informs my feedback is what do we anticipate will actually change as a result of this tabletop exercise and this discussion.

Do we anticipate that we are going to substantial substantially change the focus areas or the types of contracts that we have, will we say that we're just gonna do away with delegate agency funding and fund these areas instead?

I guess what are we anticipating happens that well uh I'm gonna I'm gonna I'll repeat what the mayor said, but what the mayor's said earlier was that it may inform the council on whether or not you should execute some decisions based on that solicitation or not.

Um and and that's why I think she's asking for do you do you wait to find the results?

The other end the other back end of that is that we're gonna I just said to the councilman we're not coming back with any answers.

So um I think um uh I don't know if it's really gonna if it really makes a big difference in the big scheme of things.

Sure.

But it but and the other thing is is that if we go through a solicitation um and we're we're gonna come back to council and be session in the spring with the the preliminary results, the council may say we're not doing any of it, or we're only gonna do a half of it because we want to do X, Y, and Z.

Just because we go through the solicitation does not mean we're wedded to it until you guys vote and approve it.

I guess how long was the um the original contracts that were extended that we extended in the spring?

How long were they originally?

Were those two years?

They were well it would have been 12 months of one year renewal.

Yeah, gotcha.

There were two years cycle.

And so I guess it just not making a decision or delaying uh or extending contracts, that is essentially making a funding decision that equals millions of dollars.

And so I guess uh my question remains, I guess, for your mayor would be what it what do we anticipate would be the major discussion that we're having as it relates to data agency funding.

Well, that really depends on the scenarios that we settle on, right?

Based on the input that you've heard here as you all provide feedback to the city manager about, hey, actually, you know, instead of my suggestion of loss of 50 percent of health and services and and the other thing, are there other things that you want to to look at?

And when you then answer those questions, maybe the distribution on slide five of the first presentation isn't exactly how you want it to be, right?

You've got um kind of three a third of that going to children and and youth, you've got um you know a certain percentage going to strengthening families.

Maybe it it changes how you divvy that up.

It also may change some of the performance indicators that you're actually really concerned about.

If we know, for example, chip and snap are going away, maybe it's less about dropout rates and more about food security for the kids, and then that then drives a different set of uh nonprofit entities that you would then end up funding and prioritizing as part of this.

Gotcha, okay.

I guess I'll say it's worth having a robust discussion, and I don't anticipate we anger too many people by extending contracts, but I do think we need to move forward as hastily as possible and start having that conversation quickly as uh councilman Via Brand had mentioned.

Yeah, thank you.

Well, yeah, thank you, Chair, for that.

I mean, it's it's it's really I think we all want to make sure we're funding the the groups um expeditiously, um, but funding the right groups, right, based on what we understand to be um the changes in in here.

Um who else have we got?

Um Councilman Castillo, please.

I I think in terms of great questions, Councilman.

I think in terms of what the expectation outcomes of the tabletop exercise, I understand having more information uh for council to have parameters in terms of what this RFP can potentially change to, uh, but I'd like to trust that my colleagues understand their districts and understand what these federal cuts and how they're going to impact our constituencies.

Um I I I am uncomfortable with the delay again with the expectation that this RFP moves in alignment with the SA forward plan, uh moves in alignment with the UTSA violent plan uh and uh the strategic housing implementation plan in mind, um, because it's important that we continue to make those investments because they will overall impact the the health within San Antonio's ecosystem.

But all that to say I do believe there is value in the tabletop exercise, but ultimately if we don't have an additional bucket of money for us to identify of how we're going to support what we identify as a need, I I I feel uncomfortable putting it on hold when we know there is current needs, nonprofits providing those services.

But I do think there is value in talking about whether it's a potential what folks have talked about what rate increases look like and how we can find that gap.

Because again, if the exercise isn't going to point us to how we're going to financially support, uh, I I have concern, right?

Because I think that's the expectation is how are we going to pay with what we're identifying.

The um, yeah, thank you, Councilman Castillo.

Um, you're right, it's it's not going to tell us or show us where more money is.

We're gonna have to, if we identify that gap as something that we are not that we find to be unsatisfactory, we then are gonna have to say, Eric, how might we pay for this?

Where are potential buckets?

Um, and while we might not know of those yet, understanding the scale and scope of the gaps will then help us understand, frankly, how aggressively we ask Eric to go find that money because the money does exist.

Funding it or not funding it is a choice, right?

There are ways in which we know we could fund this if we wanted to, but understanding what the gap is, understanding what the bill may be, and then making a decision about whether we do or do not fund that um is is a decision in and of itself.

But just because we might not know where it might be funded where it may not where it may be funded from today is part of this, but is not necessarily um, I think a reason as to to why we might not consider potentially funding some of those things.

Um who else we've got?

Councilwoman Mesa Gonzalez.

Thank you.

Yeah, I just want to be clear.

Um I'm not comfortable on delaying um the delegate agency funding.

Uh the tabletop is a hypothetical exercise, and I appreciate the work that city staff is going to do on that with our partners, but uh just want to make sure that we move forward with delegate agency funding because uh these are real implications that nonprofits are working on.

Um, and I also just want to make sure that when we get presentations like this, two presentations and one B session that without advanced understanding uh being asked to essentially connect the two, right?

And I think we should have some time to deliberate on big questions like that, right?

Um, so I just want to make sure we don't get into that habit of doing that.

But uh yeah, want to just continue that delegate agency funding uh for the nonprofits that uh were here and that are waiting for this.

Uh Eric, can you please summarize what you've what you've heard here in the last round.

So, Mayor, we're gonna take um this this afternoon's conversation.

Um there's a couple adjustments on uh the solicitation regarding um some of the feedback that you provided.

We'll make adjustments um on that.

Um I think we're gonna at this point in the follow-up memo to the council, we'll lay out the timeline.

Um, and we're gonna stay on track with the schedule that we outlined and um provide any individual if there's individual discussions that individual council members want to have about timing, we'll do that.

We'll stay on track.

We're also going to uh give back to the council um the feedback we get on the exercise.

I I'm combining the two things right now because I'm trying to summarize both and um hopefully we can get that back to you by next Wednesday.

Um I think we'll target to get back to the council by next Wednesday also, the wrap up summary of of the adjustments that we're making based on the delegate agency conversation.

So next Wednesday we'll get both of those back to you in uh separate memos, that way you can um ascertain and provide any feedback.

We've got a little bit more runaway time on both of them.

Um and if anybody's got any follow-up conversations or you think of something, don't hesitate to let us know.

Thanks, Eric.

Uh, thanks again, uh Melody to your team.

Thanks, Justina, for laying that out for us.

Thanks, uh Chief, as well.

And we look forward to uh the good discussion.

Um there being no further discussion, the time is now 5 14 p.m.

and the meeting is adjourned.