But we haven't had that much success.

This I think we will have incredible success.

We have made leaps and bounds from where we were before.

And it's a really exciting topic to talk about.

Oh, okay.

Okay.

Thank you.

Great.

Sorry.

No, no, that's fine.

It's what you want.

Sure.

Gotcha.

Primarily with the Center of Excellence is formalizing things that we have been doing for years.

Um we search for grants for departments.

We refer grants to departments.

We technically help grant or departments with submitting their grants, building their budgets.

But now we're going to be also instituting automatic reminders when reports are due and helping departments with the reports if they need some technical assistance.

We are going to be able to track we put together one golden list of grants over the last several months.

Every department met with every department.

So now we have a clear field of exactly what we're working with now.

We did find in i in our in our work, we did find there were some grants that were out there that had been closed or had been that we had not taken off our you know, closed off on our books.

So we took care of that, so it's all clean now.

Everything looks looks really good.

And but do we get the money?

No, but yeah, right.

Yes.

We just hadn't been taken off the box, right?

There might have been five dollars left here or five dollars left there, but they didn't, we just got just closed out and yeah, so that was we didn't lose any money.

So um so we're very we're very excited about it.

I'm excited that we'll be able to see, we're hoping to see trends of grants that we are successful with, and perhaps grant trends of grants that we're not successful with, and that we need to put more attention into our research and into our development of those narratives.

I'm just glad to see that you're working to bring everything together because for so long everything has been sporadic and it's been all throughout the city in different departments in different areas.

So I'm glad to see it's pulling together.

Absolutely, and there will still be the subject matter experts in the departments.

They will be doing a lot doing a lot of the writing.

We will be assisting them for example.

I don't know about planning, you know, so Owen Carney will be writing those grants.

We will be assisting him, but the all the centralization of the management will be in research.

And you'll keep your eyes on it.

Okay.

No.

I'm sorry, it's not.

Okay.

Um just getting getting at the capacity issue.

Um I wrong, do you guys know that?

I don't know.

Yeah, exactly.

I don't know if it was a consultant, but did you have somebody?

Did you have somebody in a temporary service?

Sorry, yes, it's um Sarah Stevens.

I'm so sorry.

Yeah, Sarah Stevens would be.

And what's Sarah from Cadznovia?

No, she lives in the city.

Okay.

I don't know why I got that.

I thought it was a little weird that we couldn't find our locally, but yeah.

That is that that was a capacity that was a capacity issue.

We were we were short staffed from COVID.

We were still building up our staff.

We still have a very small staff.

Um but we are we are moving forward this year with the same staff.

I am confident I have such a great team, you know, that I am confident they can handle what's coming our way.

But this is the first year is the year for us to see really how this plays out.

And if we realize at the end of the year that next year we really do need people and we need the capacity, we can prove it.

We can with there's data that we can prove it to come to you and say we need you know two extra people or we need a data entry person, or we you know we want to be able to support that.

Right.

So right now he's three or what three of you writing grants.

Well, there's there's six of us upstairs one, two, is it right?

No, five of us upstairs.

Okay.

Yeah, we do some writing.

Um we do a lot of the writing of the police department grants, because I think I've said here before nobody becomes a police depart a police officer to write grants.

So we do a lot of that for them.

Um, but mostly, and we also do the management.

So mostly this will be the management.

There will be there will be grants that we will be writing ourselves, but the vast majority will just be helping the other departments.

Okay.

Are the police grant dollars high enough where it would constitute a good reason for them to have their own grant writer?

Well, he doesn't just do grants.

Okay.

Um he does he does other things in our department too.

He just handles all of the all the police grants.

Right, but I mean inside the police budget doesn't make sense.

There's a lot, there's a lot of grants.

I mean, they and they they have a lot of grants.

They are fair, and I and I don't want to mean to make light of this, but they're fairly easy to manage.

It's mostly equipment, so that you can say, check that box, we've purchased that.

Here's the invoice, here's the check.

It's not we have to um talk about programming and and and the nuances of programming and and and performance measures.

So um the police department, um, I I think it's it keeping everything centralized in our department, I think is key to the success of this project.

I don't want to put words into counselor Monto's mouth, but I feel like what he's getting at is the kind of the idea, the concept that we have so few ways to generate revenue or to bring money in.

And if there's a way that we can support additional dollars coming to the city, I think that we'd be willing to.

I think that's exactly where I was going.

The whole return on investment of putting a staff member in place.

Like I I always think let's hire more city staff if it makes sense to do so.

And this is one of those areas, and I know I've been harping on this for four years, I think, but it's one of those areas that I just think it would it it deserves more investment.

You you should have more than five people working on grants.

Right, and and and I I won't disagree with you.

Okay, um I like that job.

Janet, what about compliance?

So you write the grants, and then who is in charge of compliance?

We we work between the subject matter experts and our department.

In this case, the our department will be taking a little bit of a more forward stance.

We will be working with the departments saying to them quarterly, here's here's the questions you need to answer.

This is we what we need to give to the funder.

So maybe you prepare the reports with racing.

Correct.

Okay.

And we'll make sure that they know that the departments know exactly what they need.

Because they're not some of them aren't grant people either.

That's why I'm asking.

Yes.

Yes.

So that that way falls on those five people and you also.

Yes.

Okay.

That's a lot.

How many dollars ballpark flow through your department?

I wanted to keep like like every year I remember.

I don't need an exact grant thing, and I have a number for you.

Of course, I didn't have it for share.

Um, I'm gonna tell you that with within Helma, I'm not gonna tell you anything.

Let me go check it, and I will email you and let you know.

I don't want to give you the wrong figure, and I'm sorry, I'm unprepared with that.

Not a problem.

It's a big number though.

It is a big number.

Well, I will tell you, and we are far more successful than we are unsuccessful.

I don't want to give it a percentage, but when we do the Center of Excellence next year, I'll be able to give you a percentage.

I'll be able to tell you every grant we applied for, every grant we received, every grant we partially received.

I will be able to give you that information next year.

I'm all set.

I just want to thank you for the work that you do.

Okay, thank you.

Thanks very much.

That was quick.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I get a motion to adjourn.

Motion.

Second.

All right.

Thank you very much.

We'll see everybody at 10 30.