We'll go ahead and get started. This is the Social Services and Community Development Committee meeting of March 20, 2012. Well, Chair George Myers will be late, so as co-chair, I will chair until he arrives. So thank you all. First on the agenda, we need approval of the minutes. Any discussion? All in favor? Aye. Thank you. And then next we will have Commissioner Mills, I believe. Good morning. This is the partner agency funding update, correct? Yes. We're coming to a conclusion of the long journey we've been on together. I really do not have a lot to say. I'm going to turn it over to Craig Benz. He's done the yeoman's work on this process. it had a lot of moving parts and pieces that's why we discussed it in this committee so much a lot of our partner agencies are here today so after Craig finishes he's welcome for questions if you want to ask them what their experience with this process is I'm sure they would be glad to answer your questions as well I'm speaking for them but I was, all in all it's not a perfect process but we had more agencies apply than have ever applied in the past so it was an open process for the community We had independent review boards that spent six different sessions over three weeks reviewing these in depth. Some of the folks from your council and your aides were a part of that. We ended up with a ranking for every agency that applied. So I'm going to turn it over to Craig. He's going to tell you how we got to where we are today and then how some of the allocation recommendations are going to be made. Thank you. Commissioner, Councilmember Crosby has a... You mentioned that you had had more agencies that had ever applied in the past, and that's something I do have a question on, but since you commented on it, I'll just ask you all real quick. When you say, because as I go through this, before you get started with the ranking, I noticed that there may be one agency that has several different, I guess. Craig's going to present that in his presentation in detail. Basically, it's because we're funding programs instead of agencies that some agencies applied for multiple programs. Well, I understand that, but are you saying that there's more programs that have, because you said you've had a record number. There are 26 agencies applied this year, 13 new and 13 who applied in the past. So that's what I mean by new agencies that this government has not funded in the past. Good morning. All right, it's working. As you know, we spent a significant amount of time over the past year developing a new process for partner agency review, and we've been implementing improvements to the funding process for social service agencies. Our objectives today are to review the process. Craig, would you bring the microphone? Thank you. Is that better? Okay. So our objectives today are to review that process timeline that this committee underwent to get to this point. I'd also like to provide you with a summary of the applications that we received for next year's funding. We'll briefly go over the application scoring, and I'd like to talk a little bit about the next steps in the process as well. So this is the process to date. Between May and September of last year, there were four meetings of this committee to discuss the process. We brought the application forward to you as well as a scoring rubric, and you approved that in September of last year. After that point, we advertised for a pre-application meeting. We held that pre-application meeting in October of last year, and at that meeting we had a total of 70 attendees. We had 50 agencies represented, including our existing 15 partner agencies. So we had 35 new agencies at that meeting. And this is just a visual depiction of that process again. You saw this early last year, and we're on the last step of this process where we're developing funding recommendations next and then moving forward with PSAs or purchase of service agreements. So this slide shows you the applications we received at a glance. We received a total of 41 applications from 26 agencies. And just to be clear on that, agencies were able to apply for more than one program. So we had one agency that applied for 10 programs. But there were a total of 26 agencies, unique agencies that applied. 13 of those were existing partner agencies and 13 were new or potential partner agencies. The total request was $3.23 million. The total funding that was allocated this fiscal year towards partner agencies was $1.75 million, so there was a substantial increase in the request. I believe the request was just over $2 million last year, so it has gone up. And there was a wide diversity of the agency types that applied. They responded to each of the funding priorities that this committee established, the services for senior citizens and mental health and substance abuse services and so on on the slide. This shows you the applications at a glance. What we did is we split them up into a pie chart just to show you graphically the funding areas that we received applications for. We would have liked to have received more applications for services for senior citizens. There were only six of those from the 41 this year. So one of the recommendations we have as staff for next year is potentially putting priorities on those funding areas for funding. The two higher areas for funding were public health, basic human needs, and also mental health and substance abuse services had quite a few applications as well. This is that same information, but it shows you in dollars how the dollar amounts broke out for each category. and we had just right at a million for mental health and substance abuse services and basic human needs. That largely happened because some of our bigger applications, frankly, came in those two categories. Salvation Army had an application that was $250,000 for basic human needs. The Hope Center, of their ten applications, six of them were in mental health and substance abuse services, and that accounted for $783,000 of that total, you see. And they also had two programs for basic human needs, totaling about $490,000. And then finally, the other large application we had was Community Action Council. They came in at $197,300, and that was for basic human needs again. The average funding request overall was just under $80,000 for each application across the 41. So six scoring committees reviewed the applications this year. The committees were made up of four to five persons each and included council members and aides, social services advisory board members, and goodgiving.net and other allied agency staff. We also had committee members included that were recommended by United Way of the Bluegrass and the Junior League of Lexington really came through. We ended up with eight members of Junior League of Lexington sitting on our committees. I think we had a Junior League person on each committee at least. Each committee member signed a non-conflict of interest statement. That's something that was brought to the committee previously. And they reviewed about seven applications on a 100-point scale, and that was according to the scoring rubric that you had approved previously. They met on six evenings in February and March at the Lexington Senior Center to hear presentations. They heard presentations that were 10 minutes long, and then they had five minutes to answer questions. And the purpose of those presentations was really to allow more understanding of the program. All of the reviewers had the opportunity to adjust their scores up to 10 points after they heard those presentations. So here's the results of the committee's hard work. This is a ranking from highest to lowest for all of the agencies that were reviewed. The darker blue, it's not really showing up correctly on the slide, but the shaded area represents new applicants or new agencies this year. Of the top 25 ranked programs, five were from agencies applying for social services partner agency funding for the first time. Those were Mission Lexington, YMCA, the Carnegie Center, which previously received general partner agency funding, so they're not a first-time partner agency, just a first-time social services partner agency. We also had Kentucky Refugee Ministries in the top 25, as well as Urban League of Lexington. Chrysalis House ranked first this year, and there was about a 38-point spread between the highest and lowest ranked applications. This slide is just a continuation of the rankings, and again, the shaded area represents new partner agency applicants, in the lighter areas of our existing partner agencies. So with all of that said, we still have some work to do. The next step in the process is to allocate funding based on scores. With the mayor's approval, we're convening a working group made up of the mayor's administrative staff, council members, and DSS advisory board members to help frame funding decisions for the mayor's consideration. So again, at this time, we're assuming that the funding will remain right at or close to that $1.75 million that was allocated this year. We're also fine-tuning our quarterly reporting for this year, consistent with the information we request in the new application. And we're taking a look at how we're going to handle the partner agency liaison process next year with new and potentially more partner agencies. Aside from the application process, we received quite a few comments during the presentations from the agencies that were attending that they appreciated the opportunity to meet with and to coordinate a bit with some of the other agencies. So one of the outcomes of those meetings is that we're considering convening quarterly communication meetings with our partner agencies, similar to what we do with the provider cabinet. We also recognize that this year's review process is new, and we're going to be subject to changes as we move forward. We're going to be sending online surveys to all applicants and reviewers to gain input on the process and potential improvements for next year. We'd also like to have discussions with members of this committee as well and other interested parties on how we can improve the application and scoring instruments for next year. Once we get those completed, we'll bring the improvements back to you before the implementation for next year's application cycle. And finally, the needs assessment is proposed for funding, and is scheduled to begin in the fall semester of this year. So as the needs assessment is completed, the project team is going to be reporting out to this committee, and I would expect to see the funding priorities be refined as that process takes shape. At this point, I'd like to open it up for any questions you may have. Thank you. Thank you, Craig. I have Council Member Lawless. Sure. I have a couple of questions. One is the Human Rights Commission. Is it considered in this group? I don't believe they were a social services partner agency. I don't believe they applied this year. I mean, I'm sure they applied, but... But not within the social services funding. They applied through CDBG. They're going through Irene Gooden's shop. Okay. And I just want to express a grave concern for their funding because they're not a nonprofit, and we are required to have them staffed at a certain level to be eligible for HUD and CDBG funds. The other thing is some of these newer agencies, I'm not really sure. Well, I'll come back to that. Okay. Any more? Oh, I'm sorry. No, I'm sorry. I'll come back to it. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Kay. Thank you, Vice Chair. Thanks for all the hard work on this. My question really follows up on Councilmember Lawless's. There were other so-called partner agencies. When you were talking about the allocation for fiscal year 12, does that include only the social service partner agencies, or does it include? That's correct. That's correct. $1.75 million was only for our 15 social services partner agencies. It's not inclusive of partner agencies that are administered through other departments and other funds. So, for example, Human Rights Commission would not be included in that total allocation. That's true. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Council Member Stenet. Thank you, Chair. Do you have a list of the organizations that did not receive funding? That received funding last year? Oh, that did not receive funding last year? No, that received funding last year but didn't make it through your process. Oh, sure. There were two of them. Bluegrass, MHMR, or CompCare, they had actually applied this year but didn't meet the application requirements. and Big Brothers Big Sisters did not apply this year. So there were two of the 15 that did not. And why didn't CompCare meet the requirements this year but did last year? There were four basic requirements in the application process. The agencies had to be 501c3s. They had to attend the pre-app meeting. They had to submit the actual application electronically. And they had to have an active profile on goodgiving.net. and they chose not to move forward with doing a profile or uploading a profile on goodgiving.net. So just following the rules, we weren't allowed to move forward with reviewing their application. Okay, so they met three of the four. Yes, sir. And this committee may remember, did we vote on that they had to through the whole council? I know in the committee we talked about it, but was there a motion for the whole council and the ordinance created that they had to go through goodgiving.net in order to receive any type of funding from LFUCG? There was a lot. Obviously, we can circumvent the process and give it to them anyway if we wanted to, unless there's an ordinance in place. As I recall, it was a vote of this committee, but I don't believe it was an ordinance for them. Right. It wasn't a resolution that we passed or an ordinance. We just talked about it. And I think that's some concern. I think we should have been brought to this committee before we made final recommendations. If that was the case, if they had issues, we should know what those issues are with GoodGiving.net, whether it be with one agency or any agency. And we had this discussion. There were going to be issues. because some people do not feel comfortable going that route. And I'm not sure that that's our only criteria to exclude someone. I'm uncomfortable with that decision. But I respect that's your process that we verbally did talk about. But if we're going to really do this correctly, we need to formalize that and put out there to the public why we want them to go through good giving and why we would not make an exception for anybody. Right. And it went further than just having the profile on goodgiving.net. Okay, because you said they met three of the four. I thought they did. No, that's correct, but really the purpose of that profile up there is to allow us to not collect a bunch of paperwork. It's to make it easier, I understand. About 50% of our requirements for the application are met through that profile. So if we allow an agency not to upload a profile, the application would be very incomplete. We wouldn't have a lot of information on their financials, their board makeup, their history, their programming, and a number of other things. So it really would be tough to review an application without that profile in its current form unless we went back to accepting everything in paper again and going back to the old system. I understand we're trying to make the process better, but we've done this for 37, 38 years now a different way, and this is a new way, but we need to make sure we really put in the right end of stone why we want everyone to go through that process because of the information, the less paperwork, It's more efficient, but we need to make that clearer, I think, and formalize it from this body. I think that's something we can work on, obviously, for next year. We've kind of missed the boat now, but I would hope you all would bring some kind of language so we can pass a resolution to Crystal Eyes, Evan Stone. We'll do that. Thank you. Council Member Ellinger. Thank you, Chair. My question goes to the funding decisions now. It looks like there's $3.23 million in request. And if the budget stays the same, you say there's $1.75 million that we have available? Yes, sir. What's the process now that we're going to go to decide the $1.75 million out of the $3.23 million? Within the next week or so, we're going to convene a committee that's made up of the mayor's administrative staff, council members, from this committee, and also the DSS advisory board members. I'm going to present them with several options that could work within the framework of that $1.75 million, and that committee is going to make those recommendations. I guess that's my question. What is part of that framework there? Are you looking at once it gets to 175, then you stop, or you do a pro rata share to everybody? Right. It will be part of the committee discussion. It could be that some of the top agencies are funded fully, and it pro rata tiers out from there with 80-60 or something like that. But I don't want to guess what the committee is going to come up with. But you have certain options right now that you're going to be presenting to the committee? Yes, sir. And do you have those options at this point? They're still being developed. The first is what we just discussed, that we would obviously fund the top agencies at a higher amount than the lower agencies. There's also potential for breaking it out by funding priority category to make sure that there's some funding being given to each priority category and so on. But we'll be presenting comprehensively all of those. That's what happens in the next week. Yes, sir. Thank you. Council Member Lane. Thank you, Chair. The Council recently passed an ordinance relating to the use of real estate that's owned by the city, and that's supposed to be evaluated during this process, I believe, to determine the fair market rate on that property and what the operating expenses are so that those could be considered more definitively as we look at the grants? We do have information. In the application, we requested information related to other LFUCG funding that each partner agency receives, and I believe there were about eight agencies that received either in-kind dollars through LFUCG for office space or CDBG dollars or other considerations. One agency has the use of a T-ball field on here. So we do have all of that information comprehensively. I'd be glad to share that with you if you'd like it. I think that the General Services Department or Division should probably evaluate those properties and set the market value on that. Perhaps you could check with Commissioner Hamilton on that, Okay. And that would be a good starting process. Thank you very much. Thank you. Council Member Crosby. Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm going to go back to the fact that with the first question I asked earlier to clarify and then how it ties in with the funding decisions that are going to come up. Because I have to admit I'm a little concerned. Everybody, all these agencies appear to have great needs. and I'm concerned, a few things that just glare out at me is that a lot of our new applicants on the ranking scores are in the bottom of the rankings, which tells me, one, either they didn't know what they were doing or didn't understand the process or there was something that maybe, and I don't know, for whatever reason, they're at the bottom. And I see those agencies that we have funded year after year after year at the top, And not only that, I see one in particular that I won't call out, but, I mean, it's highly ranked almost all the way through, and it's at the tune of almost $1.5 million. And so that's where I just have concerns of how you are going to determine these funding processes, you know, looking at categories. And I imagine the scores would have to come into it and making sure that somehow this is an even process, because it just appears just looking at it, I mean, my little sheet's all highlighted, and again, some of them just blare out to me at the request. And at some point, where do you say we can only do so much with one agency to try and spread it out more based on the integrity of your funding decisions? Sure. One of the options we're looking at is putting a cap of the total available funding, a percentage cap on that for any one agency to make sure it's not too unbalanced as we allocate the funds. That'll be something that we present to the committee within the next week as well. I think the application and the scoring instrument that the committees used was pretty objective and I was a little surprised at the way some of it turned out, but I truly don't think that I don't think it was a function of it being an existing partner agency versus a new applicant. I wasn't suggesting that, but what I was suggesting, because it's very clear on the paper that the last several applicants were all new applicants and they're all very, they're not ranked very high. So, I mean, it's not me suggesting that there's a difference between people who've done it before and new people. The back page speaks for itself with the highlights. You had, what, 13 new agencies? That's right. And on the back page, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10 of the 13 on my back page are lower ranked. So, I mean, I don't know how you all did it. I'm not suggesting that there was any problem with the integrity of the process and the people who were doing the ranking. What I'm suggesting is it jumps out when we see it shaded like that. so I would just I would hope maybe that you all might consider too before you go into your process maybe getting back to us with how you are going to do it because what we're hearing now is you've done all this and this is what we asked for but now we're trying to figure out how you're going to make these funding decisions and I think Council Member Stenet touched on this quite a bit as you're going into that process and you can't really tell us how you're going to do that yet, and it's going to happen in a couple weeks. So that would just be my request. Thank you. Sure. Council Member Lawless. Thank you. Thank you. Was any consideration in the ranking given to programs or agencies that were using the money for match for, say, federal or state grants? That was a question in the application, but it didn't end up being part of the scoring rubric. So there was no bonus points allocated or anything of that nature if they used match dollars. I mean, it seems to me that if you have, that that's really significant as far as providing services to our community. If you have an agency that depends on this money to get as 20% match for a federal grant, then if they're not funded, we also, the community loses that federal grant. So I guess I'm a little surprised that that wasn't part of the issue. I'm just taking a quick look at the scoring sheet to see if that may have fit into one of the categories that I'm not thinking of. off the top of my head. There were questions in there related to partnership and collaboration components that could have been part of. Could you speak a little louder? I'm sorry. Oh, sorry. It may be me, but I can't. There was a question that asked if the program included a partnership and collaboration component that the reviewers may have been able to use grant match for part of that. And was that part of the scoring? Yes, ma'am. Yeah, that was worth five points. And the rest of anything related to the dollars were related to diversity of their funding base and so on. So, yeah, there was not a specific question related to that. That's great input, though, for the next time we go through this. I'd just be glad to ask her to add that to the process. And on one level, I appreciate the process, but there seems to also be somewhat of a flaw in that if the money being requested by an agency is matched for, say, a federal grant, And they also do provide pretty essential services that, like, for instance, violence prevention seems to have ranked pretty highly. And there are several of these agencies that I guess were applying for match money for other programs but also do a lot of violence prevention. So that seems to be a flaw in the system. I appreciate the comment. I think what I can do with that is add that information for the scoring committee in the next week so that they are aware of agencies that are specifically using dollars for match, and they can use that as part of their funding. So, for instance, if they have an array of programs, and violence prevention is one of their programs or any other of these that seem to rank pretty highly. But what they were applying for was match for another program that's going to create a big problem for that agency, I guess is what I'm trying to say. Sure. And that is a good point. We couldn't cover the whole watershed. One thing I would like to address, though, is we gave extra points. No, for anyone that did not use more than 20% of their funding to be LFUCG funding, because of our 1.75 and the needs of these agencies, there's no way that we can make we are one of many of their funding streams. So what we were looking for is that if our money should go away, could they still exist? So there was a thing in there. What percentage that we looked at, what percentage of their funding was urban county government relevant to the rest of the money they had, not just match but in any funds? So there was bonus points if their money from us did not exceed 20% of their total funding, if that makes sense. We kind of lit on that, Council Member Lawless, instead of on the grant thing, but that is a point well taken. There are a lot of details that we learned from our scoring committees, and our committees were great. A lot of these folks do grants for a living and understand this process. And, well, you should have thought of this, you should have thought of that, because it's first out of the box. You don't have everything in there, and so hopefully next year. And also, if I might make some comments about the reason this allocation process was chosen, I talked with Commissioner Driscoll about how this was done in Louisville and I have some history with partner agencies because I've come and gone from urban county government I did call a commissioner back from years ago and the advisory board of the social services department used to pick the agencies these are the agencies we need they and the commissioner made a recommendation to the mayor and they just kind of lived forever and then a mayor came in and said I want a process and you may remember this when you were at rape crisis but we used to sit in the 12th floor conference room with the mayor and council members and the commissioner of social services and people made presentations. But largely it was the agencies that had always been funded unless somebody said we got a new need. There never was really an application. It was just folks that, you know, not any new applications much. So this does divert from that. In recent years, agencies have not been coming in for any kind of oral presentation. So we have kind of gone back to that model. But I met with Commissioner Driscoll, and she said in Louisville they've had this process for years. You have to do these four things to apply. They have a standard application, much like we have. And if you don't meet the deadline and all the information in the application, you're rejected, just as if you were a federal or foundation funder. And that's kind of the way it felt, even though it wasn't as strict probably as a federal grant. And then the first level of review were these panels that met at the senior center. and rather than just, you know, there's a lot of information to process here and a lot of ways to go in doing funding. And we figure the more heads on this, the better from a variety of places. And there is a second level of review in Louisville, and we've spoken to the mayor about how he wants to have his recommendations brought to him, and he likes the panel idea. So we would like three, at least three or two of you all from this committee to sit on the panel, Two members of my advisory board, senior staff from the mayor's office will be there. Craig and I will be there just to give information and questions, you know, answer questions. But hopefully within a couple hours we can sit down with this and arrive at some recommendations for the mayor. Remember the recommendations. It's the mayor's budget and the council's budget. So they're only recommendations based on this scoring. But I do think with scores and a detailed process, it is much more defensible to say why we arrived at the decisions we did and that more people were available to apply, you know. And I think you did a great job, and I think it's the first time doing it. And, you know, so obviously they're going to be, oh, well, you know, this and that. And the second thing, my time's up, but I think it would be helpful to have a list of each agency and their total request and how many different applications they presented and what their total request was because a lot of them have one. Some have, like you said, 10 or 12 different applications. So that also would be helpful information. Thank you. Thank you. I have some comments or questions if it's okay with the committee. I participated in the process, and I thought for the first time I thought it was great. At least I agree with the commissioner. We're just not saying, oh, you can have the money or, you know, there is a process. whether or not it needs to be done by ordinance, I don't know. But I think that it's definitely better than what we were doing in prior years. And there were significant increases, I believe, in partner agencies that have been funded over the years. The majority of those, Craig, if you could answer, they did request additional funds this year, correct? Many did, yes. The majority of them? They did. Do you want me to go through that? I'd be glad to just call those out very quickly if you'd like. Just with the increases, Chrysalis House, their current year funding is $33,000. and their request for next year was $122,000. Sunflower Kids is allocated $20,800. If you could speak up, please. Mike doesn't like me. Sunflower Kids was allocated $20,820 this year, and they requested $28,314, so just a minor bump there. Community Action Council received $149,850 this year, and they've asked for $197,300. Movable Feast was within $5,000 of last year's request. Nursing Home Ombudsman was within $4,000 of last year's request. Bluegrass Community Action Partnership was within $6,000 of last year's request. Some of them were, looks like MASH was exactly the same, but they split it into the two programs that they requested funding for. Salvation Army, they received $180,000 last year. This year they've asked for $264,000 for one program and so on. It looks like the NEST had a total ask this year of $120,000. They received $41,630 last year. and last but not least, Baby Health received $14,990 this year, and they've asked for $25,000. So there were a few that had significant increases, and I think it was mostly due to the fact that they were asking for the dollars programmatically. So when they started really looking at their programs, the dollars bumped up. Okay, well, thank you very much. And it seemed like there was one other thing I wanted to mention, and now it's slipping. Oh, I did neglect to mention Hope Center had received north of $650,000 this year, and they were the largest request for next year. They were at almost $1.5 million for their 10 programs. And I guess the bottom line is there are a lot of needs in our community, and we have very little dollars really to go around when you look at it. But I think once we get a needs assessment completed, that will certainly make this process much, much better. Because what I might feel is a need, for instance, I'm seeing an increasing senior population. I was very impressed with some of the new agencies that did present and their innovative, the programming that they offer. Many of them have been providing services but not funded through LFUCG. So I think the process did open it up to where we did get quite a few more requests. So thank you. And I have Council Member Ford that has a question. Thank you, Council Member Henson. Just a quick question. I know we've and appreciate the work, Craig, and Commissioner Mills that you guys have done. Just quickly as we turn our gear to the allocation process, there's twice as much requests as there are funds available. And I'm looking at your chart that talks about the need categories. I know we have a need assessment pending and forthcoming. In this fiscal year cycle, is there any chance that the department is considering zeroing in on certain needs as opposed to others, prioritizing certain needs as opposed to others, with just the reality that there's just not enough funds to go around, as opposed to kind of spreading and touching all kind of words. All of these agencies are doing an excellent job. That's right. And, you know, there's human service needs across the board. Our department is surviving on the three divisions that we have pretty much. We had our budget hearing this morning. So these agencies are going to be doing things that we can't do in-house. And I think that it's our desire from our department to fund agencies that are doing services that we're not able to do. Keep in mind that it's $1.75 million. There are other partner agencies that get money. There are other monies. It would be up to the mayor and council to change that amount of money. We're not comfortable making funding decisions. We're comfortable doing the process and helping facilitate the process, but it's beyond our role. The goal of social services is to have, our mission statement is to have accessible human services across the community. So that goes well beyond my department. Our department does what it can internally, but another part of our mission is accessible services across the community. That's where these agencies come in. And we ask all of them, is there a statutory reason that urban county government needs your services? In some cases, they can show us that. But in all cases, we all have to work together. We're all struggling for dollars and competing for grants. And so, you know, we support all these agencies. These are very tough decisions to make. Sometimes an agency that asks for $20,000, that means as much to them because they're a smaller agency. It's going to impact them as much, but another agency is going to need more to do the operations they do because of the scope of their work. So these are going to be tough decisions. I hope some of you will decide to serve on this committee and get in the weeds with this thing and decide what kind of recommendations we want to make to the mayor. Okay. Commissioner, thank you. Thank you for those comments. And to that end, committee members, I think that in lieu of a needs assessment, that we're at a policy decision, a policy level basis right now. I think that to a great part the staff at social services have, they are attempting to do perhaps as much as they can do. But I think that I would welcome the opportunity for us to kind of make some policy decisions as to whether we spread the wealth, the limited resource that we have around all the needs, or whether we focus on what we determine as best we possibly can to be the greater needs. and I would tend to think that that would be some much-needed guidance to the folks in social services. Thank you. Council Member Hinson. Council Member Kaye. Thank you, Chair. I just want to remind Council and the public that this Council made a policy decision to follow up on Council Member Ford's comment. that shifted the basic notion about what government was doing with outside agencies, as I understand it, and that was to shift from supporting agencies to supporting programs. Now, it may be, when we look at the result of that shift in policy, that we're not comfortable with it. But right now, that's what, as I understand it, that's what we decided to do, to say we're not funding agencies on an ongoing basis. That's not our role. Our role is to identify new programs that are innovative, that's part of the scoring mechanism, and to encourage agencies to provide new and different ways of meeting the needs in this community. Now what that means is that there may be some agencies who we have funded traditionally as agencies who, according to this new policy, don't rank as high. So I think we have to look at the result of the policy as we go through this process. And again, in agreement with Council Member Ford, I think this council should look at the policy question because really we have two roles. One is setting the policy, and then the second is allocating funds to meet the policy we've set, consistent with the policy we've set. It's not an easy thing to do. This new system that's been put into place, I think, has worked relatively well. I also participated in the process and was part of the review process. And as is true with any kind of a system like this, until you go through it, you don't really know how it's going to work. So I had looked at the scoring rubric, and I had made some comments. But sitting there, being a part of an evaluation panel, I understood better how that rubric works and does not work. So I've got some, I think, some ideas for improvement going forward. But this fiscal year, which is the first fiscal year we've used this system, we have an obligation to be basically consistent with the policy we've set, to follow the process we've set, so that the agencies who submitted in good faith according to that system are evaluated according to that system, and we make our decisions about allocation according to that system. Going forward, I think there's opportunity for revision and review, first, of the overall policy and whether that meets the social service needs in our community, and secondly, the way in which we then implement that policy and allocate funds. Thank you, Chair. If it's okay with the committee, Council Member Lawless would like to speak again. Thank you, committee members and Madam Co-Chair. were they aware of what the priorities were going to be like violence prevention or absolutely we had when we had our pre-application meeting in October we presented all of the those funding priorities to the the all of the attendees so they were aware and it's also the first page of the application, they have to choose one of those funding priorities because they had to meet one of them in order to apply. Okay. And the second question I have is what is Mission Lexington? Mission Lexington, they provide medical care free of charge. Is that over in where the... The dental clinic on Milestone, free dental clinic. Okay, so it's the dental clinic. As I understand it, it's primarily dental care, but they also provide general medical care as well. Okay, and the Kentucky Refugee Ministries, and all of these agencies, I think, do a great job and are terribly needed, and it's really hard to be in that position. But I'm curious about services for senior citizens and some of the things that, and I guess looking at their application, that it seemed like an unusual list of things that they provide. Sure. I have a summary of all of the applicant agencies and the programs that they've submitted for. I'd be glad to provide that by e-mail if you'd be interested in that. And lastly, I just want to say last year there was a big hoorah about agencies that asked for increases. and there are a lot of agencies that came in here and didn't ask for any increase even though their needs are greater. Was there any kind of reward for that? Because they certainly were penalized last year. We did ask them on the application if they were requesting increases because we knew council would be interested in having that information, but we did not score based on it. It wasn't part of the scoring. But I mean, last year there was a lot of, I think, penalty for asking for an increase. Right. And we do have that information in a spreadsheet form as well that shows which agencies were proposing salary increases and so on. I'd be glad to provide that as well. Well, and I do want to thank everybody that participated in this process, including the agencies, because having been a director of an agency writing grants, I know it's a lot of time and energy, so I want to thank the agencies that participated in submitting these and going through this process that was different this year. Thank you. Thank you. I have one more question. And, Commissioner, or Craig, you might ask, there are other agencies that we fund, correct, that are not really considered partner agencies? That are not considered? Like CASA, for instance. Yes, CASA comes under government, actually. It's under our Division of Youth Services. There are some programs that have bought in-house. Partners for Youth is another one. That is a 501c3, but the director is made to the mayor, and they work hand-in-glove with us. I don't know how those relationships came to be. As social service agencies developed over the years and got funding, they got these quasi- That's why I think it was really good that we said you had to have a 501c3 to be eligible. We had to turn away a 501c4 that was really a very good agency, But we got a law opinion on that. There was an agency who funds through a university that does good work, but there were indirect costs and there was a different kind of animal than a 501c3. So at some point you have to say that's why we had the four criteria. And Council Member Stendent may be right. Maybe that's something we need to codify so that years from now we're not saying, how did this agency get this way and that agency get this way? but for this year it had to be a 501c3 they had to come to the orientation meeting we did have one agency came to us oh we missed the meeting we got notice can we apply and we said no not fair you know we try to be fair the other one was that they they had to be on good giving and this committee did agree to that because i remember we talked about what about a new agency and we said no everybody's going to be on good giving and it helped craig provide information to the review committees. He did a lot of homework for the review committees. Otherwise, I don't think we could ask any volunteer to go through six or seven of these. And then they had to have their application in by the deadline. Four simple things. And I've got to say, as we're pretty soft up there in social services, we identified several agencies that hadn't met the four criteria, and we gave them three days to correct it. We called them up and said, hey, we hadn't heard from you, or we've got your information in, and we noticed you didn't do this or that's not there can you fix this like there were two agencies that kind of applied for one grant we need to make sure that both those people were there at the orientation meeting um one of my so we gave people two or three days that met the initial four but maybe there was a piece of information missing and that's how we decided who got to come to the review committees so we're trying to make it you know you got to do these things to apply And we did cast the net broad and wide. Like Craig said, 70 people came to the orientation meeting, 50 agencies. It turned out only 26 of them made the application process. But one thing we might also look at in the future, some of these smaller agencies, Council Member Crosby mentioned how the smaller agencies didn't finish as well, they may not have good grant writing skills. They may not have good financials because they're new and young. I'm not saying they all are, but we may look at collaborations. I didn't say smaller agencies, just to clarify. I said the new agencies. Yes, thank you. But we may have agencies that can collaborate. We had some people that maybe they could collaborate with somebody else and they could submit a grant together. That might be a possibility for the future. It wasn't perfect this year, but we think it's better than what we had. Thank you very much. Any more questions? Next on our agenda is items in committee. Is there any questions about if not? Motion to adjourn. Thank you. All in favor? Aye. Thank you. Thank you.