You're watching WSTV Digital Media, all the orders the February.

Thank you everybody for being here today.

We will begin with the consent agenda.

I've already had a request to pull C one.

Is there any other ones anyone wants to pull?

I move for approval of the balance of the consent agenda.

Second.

Any opposed?

That is approved.

Will the city clerk please raise C One?

Did I mess it up?

Turned it on.

I'm all item C one resolution awarding contract for Aspolic Concrete.

Yes, thank you.

I have just one question.

I think over the years I've been noticing that there's usually just one provider, some one person who bids on this.

You know, that we have uh like APAC bought LARCO, so I think it's you know a product of those that own the plants that it's expensive to run one.

Um Sharp Brothers had it last year, and I just think it's you know their business decision whether they want to bid or not.

You know, because it's quantities as we need, so we're just continually calling them for it.

So it's not like a project like a road.

But this is just for the actual asphalt.

The product, correct?

It's not the putting it down.

So how much asphalt are we trying to buy with this?

Over the course of the year, a little over three million, possibly up to three million million dollars.

Tons of quantity.

Oh, okay.

I'd have to go get you the quantity, I'm sorry.

Okay.

It's a lot.

It is a lot, and we use it year-round, you know, in the winter we do the pothole patching, and then in the warm months we do the resurfacing and and paving repairs.

Okay, well, thank you.

I just if you might want to uh there's a curiosity about how much asphalt are we actually buying and how much we use in the year.

Okay.

I don't know if we really understand the quantity.

Thank you so much.

Okay.

Um, Mr.

Chair, I'll move for approval.

Second.

Motion second, approved C one.

All in favor, say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

That is approved.

Thank you.

By the way, you're gonna need a lot because freezing creates potholes.

Okay, we'll go to G1 if the City Clerk will please read that.

Item G1 update on fiscal year 2026, 2027 local community agencies funding process.

As y'all know, this is less than one percent of the budget and 95% of the conversations at budget season.

And we uh are constantly looking for ways to improve the process.

So, Mr.

Tesh, tell us what you're doing now.

Good afternoon, Chairman, Mayor Mayor Pro Tem members of the committee and council.

This is a follow-up uh from the January retreat where we spent about 45 minutes talking about where we've been with the community agencies process.

So we do have uh quite a few things uh on the agenda here, but I will try to get through them pretty quickly.

Um so we'll talk about where we're at uh and share some information that we shared in January.

All of the applications for local community agencies were due this past Friday at five o'clock.

Uh so I will give you kind of an overview of how many we've received, talk about the selection process that we're going to use for FY26-27 in terms of staff scoring and council, uh, the overall budget timeline and when people have an opportunity to engage you about the community agencies process, as well as we'll end with uh talking about that umbrella organization option again and what we would come back with.

So this is not something uh new.

If you want uh looked at the January retreat information, these are the currently funded uh on the left general fund and on the right, occupancy tax fund organizations uh that are managed out of the budget and performance management office currently.

As you can see, the total is about 1.3 million dollars.

Would note down there as we talked in uh January as well, the amount for general fund and for occupancy tax is scheduled to go up just a little bit in FY2627 as a result of the per capita funding model uh that we're going to.

So that leads us to what does the applicant profile look like from the applications that were opened the first week of January.

They were originally due the last week of January, but because of the inclement weather, we decided to leave that open another week so that people will have an opportunity.

We did receive, I think, seven more applications uh last week.

But as you can see, uh our total requests for funding are north of five million dollars.

Um the vast majority of that being as you can see the 58 and what we'll call human services that are in the general fund.

Um if we go through that again, we had talked about the different types of organizations, arts, business innovation, and when I get the human services on the back end, it says human services slash education slash other.

So there are some things that it's difficult to fit them into a category, but we have done our best here.

Uh the takeaway from this slide, obviously, is that there are more than 70 requests for local funding.

This does not include the entitlement grant funding handled by neighborhood services through the con plan.

There are 20 to 30 more of those, uh, but the total request for funding is over five million dollars, and the amount available will be unless you increase it less than a million and a half.

So you're looking at you know four times as many requests as we have funding available.

Uh again, this is the same slide that we shared from January.

Uh I have two slides that come after this that talk to each one of these, one on the staff scoring side and how that is done, and then ultimately how we're going to ask for your input here in about four weeks on this selection process.

Um, from a staff scoring perspective.

This is a screenshot and summary of the scoring matrix that we are using.

It does say 25-26 at the top.

I screenshotted something from last year.

It has not changed for 26 uh 27.

But as you can see, I've tried to add a summary for each one of those categories.

So there are points allocated, a total of 18, three for description, which is where we ask about the program details, the types of populations that you're going to serve, how you're going to reach out to them, and how they're going to access the program.

We do give three points for the experience either of the organization or of the principals in the organization that are providing those services.

Uh uh in the top part for funding, it is allocated based on whether you are requesting ongoing funding or one-time in nature and whether it's for a new program or not.

Uh and I will add there that we are giving uh more points for things that are one-time infusions rather than ongoing requests for funding.

Under the goals and performance section, we have points available for making sure that you have the appropriate performance metrics in place to track what you are doing, not just output, meaning how many people are you serving, but also outcome, how effective are the services that you provide, and how they align to your strategic plan, uh, and then also the key objectives and milestones that they are laying out, making sure that they are relevant to the metrics and project descriptions that they have provided, uh, and that they are also in alignment with strategic goals that the city council has.

And then at the bottom, we do request in the application that they show us exactly how they are using the money, and you get more points for using it for specific program outcomes rather than for just generally subsidizing your operating budget.

So that is the 18-point scale.

All 72 of these will be ranked.

There are two staff members downstairs who will read every single one of them and go through if there is a variance of three points or more between their scoring.

I will then score it, and we will use the average of the two closest scores.

That leads us to after we have done that, based on the information that we got back from city council at the retreat.

We are then going to be providing you an online forum with all 72 of these to be able to score them.

Again, they will be separated into general fund and occupancy tax fund.

And what you see there at the table to the right is akin to what you're going to see in the online format that we're currently working on.

We will give you the organization name, in this case, in the example I just used XYZ.

You will see a case name, which is kind of the type of program or services that they are usually providing, the staff score, whether they are currently funded or not, and at what level, uh what they have requested, and then that final column will be blank, and that is where you will have an opportunity to fill in the amount that you feel is necessary for that agency.

We will take all of the applications and they will be hosted online so that you can go through each one of the applications.

I talked with a city manager.

The applications themselves without the accompanying material are probably going to be in the range of four to five hundred pages.

If we add all of the 990s and things that they have to add to that, their code of ethics and all of those things, you would be looking at probably more than 2,000 pages.

We are going to index these for you and have them clickable so that you can click on an organization, come straight to the application and make it as easy as we can given the scope and number that you would have to look at.

I will also add the form is going to let you partially fund an organization if you want to, or at any level that you would like to please note in some cases that if they have applied for a very specific amount of program funding, it may not be that that is an option when we get to the contracting phase should they get approved much later in the process.

We have had organizations before that requested $60,000 for a program.

They were awarded a different amount, and we came back to them and they said, Well, I can't provide that program for $30,000.

At that point, you either have to rescope the program or they don't accept the money.

So you will have an option to partially fund at any level any organization that you choose.

I will use that obviously looking across what all of the council members and the mayor provide to us, and we will look at is there some consensus both on who should be funded and at what levels we will use that to help build the recommended budget.

Yes, ma'am.

When we uh look at all 72 applications, will the staff go through and determine which ones are complete because they included all of their financials, et cetera, and and therefore they don't move forward or do they move forward even if they're incomplete?

There are a few in the 72 that are probably not going to move forward for various reasons, either because they are debarred from doing business with the federal or state government and thereby can't receive a city contract.

We do have some others that have other issues that we will look at.

Uh we also, if you owe the city money, generally speaking, we do not enter an agreement with you.

Uh so there are a few that we may footnote even if we leave them in there.

The vast majority of those 72 are going to come to you because in order to hit submit on the application, they have to have entered all of the details.

So we will not take an incorrect or uh incomplete application.

If we do find out that they submitted something in correctly and it's material, then they may be kept out because of that.

But you will most likely see at least 65 of the 72 come forward in the ranking.

Thank you.

Any other questions, comment?

Continue.

All right.

Um, so in terms of budget process and timeline, again, February is staff review.

Uh we will be sending you the second week of March.

I will send you directly uh an email with a link to a tool that will allow you to do this.

We will give you the link to the application materials as well.

Once we get that from you, we will kind of do our analysis.

I will work with the city manager on where we think we need to land in terms of the proposed budget.

We will construct that budget in April.

It will come to you uh the first week of May this year, which is about two weeks earlier than last year, and a few almost three or four weeks earlier than in prior years, but the manager's proposed budget will be out on the fourth.

There are three budget workshops on May the 12th, May the 14th, and May the 21st.

Uh, one of those will we will explicitly set aside time to talk about community agencies funding.

And then I will also note that there is the public budget hearing the night of May the 18th, which we will talk about on the next slide as well.

And then you are slated to adopt the budget the first week of June this year.

Um there have been a few agencies that have reached out to staff and to council members as well, saying that they would like to be in front of the city council with some of their uh either requests or to tell you about things that they've done in the past.

I would draw you to the asterisk at the bottom, which is I want to be very careful in allowing that to happen, and I can't recommend from an equity perspective that I allow certain nonprofits to come and provide information and not others.

So, what we will be telling nonprofits and what we have always told them as part of the annual funding process is that public hearing date is the date that you get to come to city council.

There is no time limit in terms of the length of that.

We can limit them to three minutes, but at that budget public hearing, everyone who wishes to be heard by state law can be heard.

Again, if all 70 of them plus the 20 or 30 from neighborhood services decided to show up and talk to you at three minutes apiece, you'd be looking at six hours of that alone.

There were some questions from some of the ARPA agencies about coming and talking about what they have accomplished.

About half of those agencies have completed their grants.

The other half are still in progress.

Many of those ARPA agencies have also applied for annual community agencies funding, and thereby staff from my perspective can't recommend that we allow them to come and have an open venue to talk about their programs for which they're going to ask for money again.

Again, if the city council would like to, that is is completely within your purview.

All of those grants are to be expended by December 31st of this year.

So you will have from me a report in Q1 of calendar year 2027 that shows you uh what those um have been, uh all of the accomplishments of those.

We can't include time for those organizations to come forward at that point, maybe in a committee of the whole meeting.

If you would like to see, there were 15 transformational grant uh grantees, so not quite as many of those as we would normally have.

Also, if you go back to the materials from the January retreat, there was an update.

So for the six that had already closed out, what they had done, and then as of June 30th of last year, the accomplishments for the ones that hadn't closed out.

So you do have an updated report there on what has happened again as of the close of the fiscal year last year.

Um that uh where we find ourselves, so in the short term, staff is going to rank these community agencies, and then council is going to have an opportunity to do the same thing.

That is how we are going to handle community agencies funding for the fiscal year 27 process.

When we were at the January retreat, we introduced this idea of an umbrella organization funding model, and there appeared to be a consensus of council that wanted information to come back about that.

And so part of my update today is to tell you I am going to come back in the future.

We will be looking to provide you more information, uh, but we will need to a solidify that these would be the three types of areas or categories in which you would like to provide funding from a general fund perspective.

You would need to look at all kinds of program guardrails and policies related to that, the amounts of funding in each one of those baskets.

If you wanted to give 250,000 to arts, 200,000 to business, and $800,000 to human services, you as the council would have obviously the ability to set those amounts.

Um, and then there would be a slew of other types of policies that we would need to look at for the funding organizations to give them guardrails.

Uh, how long could an organization be funded for?

What are the minimum and maximum amounts that we are funding for?

What are the monitoring requirements that we are expecting?

And I will say for the first time, we actually got a question this year about indirect costs in our grantee program.

Uh, we generally don't get those types of questions, uh, but it's interesting.

And in that way, it was if I get a $500,000 grant, how much of that can I charge off to my admin costs?

Um, generally, most of these contracts just support uh general services, and we don't get into that, but we're gonna get into some policy discussions about indirect costs and what you can charge off for admin purposes as well.

Because we are in budget season, I would imagine I'm going to be bringing you this information piecemeal, probably in April and May, and then after budget is adopted, come back in the August or September time frame to solidify some things as we put the RFP out uh for the next year uh in late fall or winter.

That way, as we're going into putting out the applications, we would be able to tell everyone we know exactly how the funding process is going to work, and potentially we would have already selected these agencies that would be um the funding umbrellas.

So more of that to come over the next six months, and again, those would be council level decisions as to whether you want to implement this and what you want the individual uh guardrails to look like within those organizations.

That is all I have for you.

That was a lot.

That's all the thing on this.

Yeah.

So that was 2,000 pages we need to read.

Somewhere between 500 and 2,000 plus, yes.

Okay.

There will be a test at the end.

Be sure you read it.

Yes, ma'am.

Uh, thank you, Mr.

Tesh and your staff and team.

Yes, we did talk about 45 minutes at retreat, and we had to cut it off because I know everybody had their own opinions.

And I'm looking forward to hearing those other opinions.

But I also want my my colleagues to understand that again, the material that you sent us to show us how many years some of these organizations have been funded.

You know, I'm one of those people.

You know, I'm one of those people, my thing is, okay, if we got 50, then who else is out there that's been doing the work just as long, but have not been able to crack the glass ceiling to get any amount of funding from us.

My own personal thoughts, I believe in allowing new people to the table.

And I know as much as we like all of these organizations that's on this list, uh they like family to some of us, but sometimes again, you gotta think of the big picture of the others that again have been putting in work and they never even get a shot at anything.

And if we look and they they present their qualifications, which we'll look at, their qualifications are just as good as if not better than the people that have been getting funded for decades.

So me personally, I'm looking for new people.

Because if you're gonna grow a city and you're gonna tell them, your citizens that we want everybody to be engaged, involved, bring in new ideas, do some of the work so we don't have to do the work.

I was on the Zoom today where the city was talking about how important it is that we allow citizens in the process of everything, particularly community development block grant money, uh the budget, the the giveaway money, that's what I call it, for work being done.

Again, it's not like we are going out and we have the staff to go and do this work.

But I want my colleagues to keep in mind how long we allow the same people, same groups, same organization, and they all got a good good good you know, pitch.

I got it.

But how fair is it to all of the others that have been doing the work for 10, 15, 5, 20 years, 30, and they've never been able to get past the application process.

That's my two sets.

Okay.

Any other comments?

Yes, ma'am.

Mr.

Thank you.

I think um I have a couple of comments.

For the ARPA funded agencies, I don't think um, I would not need to have a presentation from those 15 agencies, but I think there should be a written document from them that describe what their intentions were and how effective that was in moving the needle from where they said they were going to do.

I don't think I don't need to have them present that.

Um, but I think we do need to have a written document.

We will provide you with a summary of the written documents that they send back.

Each one of the agencies based on different risk factors has different reporting intervals, but there is a final close out at the end for everyone, and so we will be consolidating that information when I send you something in Q1 of 27, it will be a consolidation of the the outcomes that they have reported.

And and just to affirm this for me, that um all of the funds have been allocated and will be consumed by the deadline date.

There's no funds that will not be spent that we will then have to turn back in.

All of the funds are completely allocated.

If you remember several years ago, there were some monies that were in a leftover pot.

All of that was transferred to the city's affordable housing program, and so at that point, all of the money became obligated uh from the ARPA projects uh and programs.

I do not have reason to believe that anyone is not going to make that December 31st deadline if they do not.

That is a conversation we would have in the future.

There is only one organization that comes to mind that at any point in the last 12 to 24 months has talked about an extension, and I don't think that they're in the same place they were.

They had a lot of staff turnover.

So at the end of the day, all of that money is currently obligated, and I assume that it will all be spent by 1231 26.

Yeah, I I certainly hope that happens.

Um, that it would be expensed.

And the other thought on my mind is um I I will like to give some thought, and I hope others that we think in terms of how we might increase our contribution to our agencies in the community.

Such a small percentage of our total budget right now.

Um, and I I think we might have that discussion on how do we increase it and where should it be going towards for our community agencies.

Thank you, ma'am.

All good comments, Ms.

Uh Burke.

Thank you, Chair Clark.

Um, I think for the 15 ARPA funded agencies, many of them would like to present.

And uh, I know that it's uh being proposed that we receive uh documentation for their success and how they use the funds, but uh I would like to be able to ask questions.

As you said, Scott, many of these agencies plan to apply for more money.

And before we make a decision as to whether or not to provide more money to these agencies, we need to be able to see and ask questions about the success or the impact that their programs have had on our community.

Um I think that also um as far as the 73.

Well, you said it's going to be reduced down to 65 of the 73 will receive a report uh for I think that there should be uh some processes that take place where staff will have an opportunity to evaluate uh all of these applicants.

And I know you have criteria.

I just read it, it was in the presentation, but before it comes to us, I think that there should be a way for you all to provide us with those that rank in the maybe top 20 percent.

In terms of the staff scoring that we provide, absolutely we can do it by tiers in any way that you need.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you.

Any other comments?

All good comments.

We will move forward with the process, and I think we will have a at the end when it's all said and done, we will need to talk about how did it go, what we like, what we didn't like, what do we want to do next year?

So with that, that's all we have on the agenda.

We will stand adjourned.

Thank you everybody being here.