Music Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Good morning. Welcome everybody to the Social Services and Community Development Committee of the Council. Today is March 18th and it's 11 a.m. I'll call the meeting to order. The first agenda item is the approval of the committee summary. Move to approve. There's a motion by Council Member Ellinger, second by Council Member Beard. Any discussion? All in favor, signify by saying aye. That motion carries. The second item on our agenda is fiscal year 2015 partner agency budget review committee recommendations. I'll ask Commissioner Beth Mills to come forward to introduce the subject. There may be folks who have come to speak on this issue, and committee members, what I would like the liberty to do is to allow the administration time to present, committee members to answer any questions, and if there is public comment, to allow at the conclusion of agenda item number two. Is that okay? Okay, great. The information that Commissioner Mills and her assistant Craig Benz is going to provide is for information only. And they'll explain that in their process. For the purpose of basis, this process has been approved by the council via resolution 557-2013, which set the process to go forward. And here we are today. Commissioner Mills, thank you. Thank you very much, Council Member Ford. Thank you, committee. This is the third year that we have entered into a process. The first year, I think, this committee discussed how the process would be done. We have included the new scoring elements that were approved by council for this year and this year's scoring of agencies. We have tried to have as much fidelity as possible to the council process and remain as impartial as possible. I would like for the committee to know and the partner agencies who are present to know that my department acts only as the administrator of this process, and we facilitate any group meetings with people who are reviewing the grants or people who are deciding the funding. My department does not have any decisions on how these agencies are ranked or how these agencies are funded. We only administer it. It was well advertised this year. Some years we hear people call and say, how come we didn't know about partner agency funding? If you see the large number of applicants we had and the variety of applications, I think you will see that we did get the word out and that people participated and followed the rules. This really is a testament to the quality of services in our community. I remember once the state secretary of human resources said Fayette County had more private nonprofit social service agencies than any county in the state. And I don't know if that's still true. That was some years ago. But that shocked me because I think about how much larger Jefferson County is. But I can say that on the entire list, everyone does a good job. And that's why it's hard for us. If we didn't see the scoring, it would be easier if we didn't know who they are. But, you know, these folks do great work in our community. The other thing I would like to say is the quality of the applications was greatly improved this year. We have reviewers who have been there two and three years, and they said these were the best applications that they have yet to see, and I think people took it very seriously this year. Another element I would like to tell you is that we are transparent above and beyond most grantors. Anyone in here who's ever filed for a federal or state grant, you get an answer. You were awarded or you weren't awarded, and that's it. You can call back and ask for your scores. We are presenting everybody's score to you all and to them, So we have gone well above and beyond what we had to do in transparency. I would like all the agencies present to know that later this week, every agency will get a detailed scoring breakdown with every score. You won't get the name of who scored you that way. You'll get reviewer 1234, and you will see how you rated on every question of your grant. The bottom line this year, there were some tough decisions made. I think the funding group worked very well to reach a consensus. Everyone in the funding group had an opinion. They went back and forth. But the bottom line was our requests this year were $4 million more than the pot of proposed money. We had $2.3 million to give away, which we gave away last year, and we had $6.3 million in requests. But I think to the funding group's credit, more than a third of the applications were funded, 30 out of the 73. So even though it was a third of the money, they were able to fund more than a third of the applications. So the bottom line is we didn't have enough to do everything we wanted to do. This was the recommendation, and I'm going to turn it over to Craig to go into details with you all. Thank you. Good morning. This is just a list of the objectives I'd like to cover today. We're going to review the process timeline, provide a summary of the applications we received from agencies for fiscal year 15 funding, present the scoring and rank order and the funding recommendations for all accepted applications and discuss the next steps and process improvement plans for next year. This slide shows the timeline of events that brought us to today. During your August meeting the committee approved a couple of changes to the process. One of those was that you added a criteria for plus or minus five points for performance of currently funded programs and that was through achieved outcomes based on their quarterly reports. You also added three bonus points for addressing barriers, those applications that address barriers that were presented in the social services needs assessment that came before you a few months ago. And those, just to remind you what those barriers were that got the extra three points, those were applications that responded to high cost of child care services, lack of access to mental health services, lack of marketable job skills, or substance abuse treatment services. Subsequent to that, in October, the council approved the application scoring instrument and the process itself, and in November, we held our annual mandatory pre-application meeting. In January, we had our application deadline, and that brings us to today. Since the application deadline, we also did have our selection advisory committee, as well as our funding work group meetings. This is just a graphic representation of the timeline I just discussed. We're of course heading near or heading towards the last step on that slide where we're developing our funding recommendations prior to PSAs. This is a list of the application requirements. This is unchanged over the past couple of years. The minimum request for any agency is 20% of the agencies, not the program, but the agency's previous fiscal year actual expenditures, and that's for diversity of funding purposes so that if they don't receive funding or receive partial funding, they can continue on. They must also be registered with goodgiving.net. They have to be a nonprofit with a 501c3 status. That's in the pre-application meeting and, of course, submit by the application deadline. So we had 73 applications this year from 50 different agencies, and all of the applications met those criteria. We did have three late applications this year that were rejected just because they went beyond the time requirement. One of the things that the committee had added to the process was a one-week period of time for minor corrections. And I just wanted to mention we only had probably two or three applications that needed to make minor corrections, and they were very minor. So the quality of the applications that we received this year was very high. As Beth said, we had $6.3 million in funding requests this year. The average request across all of them was about $86,000. But the requests varied widely. The smallest application we received was for $1,442, and the largest single program application we received was for $700,000. The applications we did receive responded to all six. of the funding priorities that were established by Council. This slide shows the breakdown of applications by priority need area. And you'll note that the number of the applications that are listed on there, 130, is actually because applications responded to more than one need. So in other words, we might have an application that responded to three or four of our priority need areas. So they were counted more than once in this breakdown. Last year, positive youth development and basic human needs were the two categories where we saw the most applications, and this year was the same. Nearly half of our combined applications responded to those two need categories. Funding category receiving the smallest response was services for senior citizens. We had 10 applications that met the criteria for that. This is that same information, but it's broken down into dollar amounts requested for each priority area. Category receiving the largest funding request was basic human needs at $2.1 million. Mental health and substance abuse services and positive youth development each received requests of over $1.5 million. And some of the larger funding requests that we received this year that were more than $200,000 came from organizations like the Salvation Army requested 425,000 this year in basic human needs and positive youth development. The Hope Center requested a total of 1.4 million for programs addressing mental health and substance abuse services, positive youth development, and basic human needs. Community Action Council requested 280,000 this year. New Beginnings Bluegrass requested 202,000. AVOL requested 217,000. The Methodist Home of Kentucky requested about 240,000. And the Child Care Council of Kentucky requested 700,000. All other agencies were beneath that 200,000 threshold. So we had eight different scoring committees review applications this year. The committees were made up of four to five persons each and included Social Services Advisory Board members, Goodgiving.net and other allied agency staff. We also had committee members from UK's graduate school, from area law offices, we had senior volunteers, we had Junior League of Lexington volunteers, and we had reviewers from Fayette County Public Schools as well. Each committee member signed a non-conflict of interest statement and reviewed about nine applications. One committee did review ten applications. and the committee met on eight evenings in February and March. The presentations by the applicants were limited to 10 minutes, followed by five minutes of questions. They focused on presenting programs, and the committee members were able to adjust their scores by up to 10 points after they heard the presentations. After the funding committee met and the scores were finalized, a funding work group convened, and that work group was made of two each members from council, members of the Social Services Advisory Board, as well as the administration. And the funding work group did things a little bit differently this year. In the past, we've just done funding tiers based on rank order of request. This year, they took a look at scoring rather than just the rank, the final ranks, and assumed the total funding amount available would go unchanged, so it's staying at about $2.3 million. Last year, the work group funded agencies down to 50% of their request, or 51% of their request, which resulted in substantial changes to program outcomes. So just to be clear on that, if an agency submitted proposed outcomes that they were going to serve 100 people and they received 51% of their funding, we also allowed them to adjust their outcomes down so they would only be serving 51 of those 100 people. So the committee this year chose to fund higher percentages of the agency requests so they could maximize those outcomes. The review committee really reviewed based on the outcomes that were presented, so they tried to keep those as close to 100% as possible. So what they came up with, based on that $2.3 million available, On a 145-point scale, any scores that were 135 or greater received 95% of the request funded. Scores that were between 125 and 134.99 received 80% of their request. Scores in the 124 range received 75%, and scores below 124 were not recommended for funding this year. These are the total funding recommendations by priority need category. It shows the funding request as well as the workgroup's recommendation broke out into each one of our priority need categories. Basic human needs and mental health and substance abuse services represent the largest funding allocations at about $700,000 each. And positive youth development represented the next highest recommended allocation at about $487,000. So this slide shows the actual funding recommendations, the ranks, the scores, and the funding recommendations. And this is the category of applications that received more, they received 135 points or more. They received 95% of funding. Kentucky Pink Connection was the highest scorer this year, and they provide patient navigation services for medically underserved populations in Fayette County. of note on this slide jubilee jobs is ranked sixth and they're a new applicant this year they help local disadvantaged residents of fayette county move from poverty through employment training and support this slide shows the 80 percent funding category and again this is for any final score that was in the 125 to 134 range there's two new agencies that are on this list as well. New Beginnings Bluegrass, which is ranked number 16 on there, as well as Volunteers of America, they're ranked 22nd. And finally, this is the funding, this is the list of applications that were recommended for funding at the 75% level, and there were four of those, and really this essentially used up the remainder of that $2.3 million in funding. and there's a total of 404,000 in this category. These are the applications that were not recommended for funding this year, and the reasoning for that, again, is just because they fell beneath that 124 threshold. This slide shows similar information. Those are the applications that were not recommended for funding. So next steps from this point forward, we've forwarded this information for consideration in the mayor's budget, and we'd like to seek council approval as part of the fiscal year 15 budget process. As in past years, we're going to be sending online surveys to all applicants and reviewers so that we can gain input on the process and potential improvements, and we'd also like to have discussions with members of this committee and other interested parties on how we can continue to improve the application and scoring instrument for next year. And we'll be bringing the results of that. We'll be bringing those improvements to you before implementation for the next year's application cycle. The only other thing I wanted to mention to you before we open it up for questions, you had an addendum to your packets today, and it had, it was just a one-page addendum. There's information on there for services to the homeless population. That's just for your information. We did a quick analysis and determined that a little over a million dollars in the funding that we're recommending provide direct services to the homeless population and about 340,000 additional provide secondary services to the homeless population for about 1.4 million dollars. So with that we'd like to open it up for questions. Thank you Craig for your presentation. We will open it up to questions from the committee. First up is Council Member Kay. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Craig, for that and Commissioner for coming forward. I have a few questions. Starting with, I think it might be helpful for people to understand what the major criteria are because I know that there's a discrepancy between what people see getting funded and what they think, from the outside anyway, might deserve funding. So can you provide just kind of a brief overview, the categories, the major criteria that are used in judging these applications? Sure. So in addition to meeting those basic agency criteria that you have to be a 501c3 and so on, there are six basic criteria, funding criteria, that programs must respond to in their application. They can respond to one or more of these criteria, and those are services for senior citizens, mental health and substance abuse services, positive youth development, violence prevention, public health, and basic human needs. So I think we've seen in the past that most social services agencies can respond to at least one of those. They fit into at least one of those categories. So it's fairly broad. But in addition to that, as I said, we had a three-point bonus for any agencies that responded to one of four areas that was identified in the needs study this year. What's interesting to note, I went through, when I was doing the analysis on this, I went through and I highlighted the agencies that received that three-point bonus, and it didn't really make or break anybody. There were agencies all the way down the list that received that three-point bonus, so it didn't really push anybody into or out of the funding overall when we looked at that. Does that answer your question? I think that helps. The second question has to do with the addendum. First of all, I'm curious why homelessness was identified as something that needed additional information at this point. Can you explain why that addendum as opposed to an addendum about seniors or youth or whomever? You mean in terms of the needs study? I'm curious why we were provided with additional information about this particular population at this time. Oh, there was a request for that information, and I thought it would be a good idea to share it with the committee. Councilmember Cain, committee members, I requested that information due to the fact that we've had great focus on affordable housing and homelessness and serving on the funding review committee that met last week. I thought it would be helpful just to segregate. Okay, then if I can follow up with that. There's a fair number of programs indicated. Are we meant to understand that these are programs that serve only homelessness, or they serve homeless population in addition to other populations? Right. Most of them would serve, some of them only serve the homeless population. The secondary services that are listed second on that list, that second set of bullet points, those are the agencies that are serving the homeless population in addition to other clients. It's secondary, so they would also have other clients. So the programs that are at the top of the list, you're saying serve only homeless people? Primarily, for most of them. There's probably one or two in there that have other clients, but their primary purpose is to serve homeless clients. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council Member K. Next up is Council Member Myers. Thank you, Mr. Chair, Commissioner. and Mr. Benz thank you very very much for this process you guys are tweaking it each year and it's just getting better and better and I really appreciate all the work you've done it's it's apparent that a lot of work has gone into this and your volunteers that are scoring and just all the people that are in the background that make this work I appreciate all your work one of the things I like particularly is the one week correction period I like that little tweak to give people a chance to make those little adjustments. I have a couple requests. In terms of reporting, like under the funding recommendations, I know it's going to get cumbersome and there's going to be a lot to read, but it might help us if you could do maybe like a one-line what these agencies are going to use the money for. Sure. Because some of these, particularly some of the new ones, maybe we've never heard of, and we have no idea what it is that they were wanting to do. So that will just help us understand that. Another tweak, and I'm not sure, you know, last year we had some money that was given back, and then there was a little bit of controversy on how that money was reallocated. If you can look at the policy and see if we can come up with, say this year somebody doesn't use their funding or they can't use their funding and it comes back to us, do we then just go down a continuation of this list of recommendations and fund the next one? or can we put into the policy how we're going to utilize those funds if that happens? And then there's a lot of agencies that were funded, but there's a lot that didn't get any funding at all. I'm going to speak to that at the very end. Maybe consider instead of doing 95% funding, do 80% as the max and then drop down from there so that some of those other agencies might get picked up. I don't that might not work. It may be that if you only do 80 percent there's not enough there for them to really address their mission. I'm not sure but just a consideration of that. Sure the the funding work group did take a look at probably 10 different scenarios and the one we presented is the one that fit the best and a lot of that related to just the sizes of the request with each category. Sometimes a 5% or 10% change didn't make a huge change, but in some of them it would tip it over so that many others wouldn't be funded. Okay. Last year did we do the top was 75%? Is that what we did? I believe last year the top was 85%. 85% last year? Okay. So just look at that. That shows you're tweaking and you're doing a good job there. the last thing I would say is the 2.3 million dollars I think that the work that you guys have done up to this point and I think this list of who was funded and who wasn't funded shows along with that needs study needs assessment that we had done that we we really need to look at this 2.3 and figure out how we can make that grow and I don't again I say this every year I don't know if it's a formula of the general fund i don't know how we do that but i guess this year i would ask if you guys will will start to think about that as an administration miss sally um what would be the best opportunity to look at how we increase the pie so that it's bigger and then on the council side we can we can do the same thing but i don't know the best way to do it i don't even know how we arrived at a 2.3. And it's, do you know how? It's just carry over from last year. We assume that we're not going to receive an increase. Okay. But I mean, even way back, the numbers stayed relatively the same. There's been. Sure. The first year I was commissioner, everyone in government took a 10% cut. Right. And so we did a 10% cut to partner agencies the first year we did this. The second year we restored the 10% cut and came to an amount. But as you'll recall, last year there were some late funded items, and the mayor increased it by even more than 10%. I think the increase was maybe $20,000. About $250,000. About $250,000 additional dollars. So this year you have to have a target number to start with with the funding workgroup. So we just started, and I think it was announced at the partner agency applications. We anticipate providing the same amount of money that we did last year. So that's why we started with the 2.3. And, of course, you understand all of this work is a recommendation. Sure. So. No, but it's great work. I don't have any criticism. Did it start with the original? How many years? Craig probably can tell you the number. Yeah. How many years, Craig, where did it start? I have, we've had partner agency funding in place for at least 25, 30 years that I was able to find. But I have the trends, the funding trends over the past 10 years or so. I'd be glad to share that if you're interested. This year, of course, it's 2.3, and that's what we're recommending again. Fiscal year 13, it was 1.8 million. 12, it was 1.75. 11, it was 1.9. That was the year before we had that 10% adjustment. Fiscal year 10, it was right at 2 million. Same with fiscal year 9, it was right at 2 million, and same at fiscal year 8, so those three years stayed right at about the same amount. Seven, it was at 1.7, and then six, it was down to 1 million. So there was a jump between six and seven. It stayed at 1 million for fiscal year five. It was down to 900,000 in fiscal year four. In three, it was way up at 1.6 million. So there's no real pattern here, unfortunately. But right now, we're actually at the highest, this year, and what we're proposing are the highest we funded as far as I was able to go back. Okay, my time is up. If I could do one follow-up, though. Some of those years when it was a lot lower and when it dropped substantially that first time in 06, maybe, there might have been where the council looked at the people who were getting funding differently. I think maybe the library was taken out because it's really not a partner agency. It's a pass-through. I think that might be something that impacted some of those numbers. But my time is up, so I'll come back later. But thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Thank you, Councilman Myers. Next is Councilmember Stenick. Thank you, Councilmember Ford. And thank you all for bringing this for us today for a recommendation. And I'll just pick up where Councilmember Myers left off. There were years, I know, when I first got on council in 2005 budget, that these were split out and funded differently. I know Councilman Myers was very instrumental in creating our outside agency review committee that didn't exist before that really took a different look at this. And we wanted to get to this point today. And so I thank you all for 10 years of work of getting us to where we're at today. Because the way it used to be is if you knew the mayor, you got it put in the budget. Usually council agreed with it. And that process, when we got elected to council, we realized that we could do better. We could really start addressing the true needs of the community versus the political needs of the community. And I think this process gets us closer to that, and I appreciate that work. So I would go back and look at some of those, how we split them out, Craig, because I think we did pull out some things and put them under different departments. And if you look at our expenditures and stuff, you'll see that's what we did years ago on partner agencies. We called them different things. Another big issue is the overall social service budget was at a high of $10.5 million back in 2009. Today, it's at $6.5 million. I mean, we've cut social services by $4 million overall in the budget. So, you know, that's a big issue for me. And when you say 2.3 is the highest, but if you compare it to how much our general fund has grown the last 10 years by 36 percent, but yet social services hasn't and it still accounts for less than 1 percent of our budget. Our partner agencies out there that actually probably do, probably multiply that by 1,000 percent in the work they do with 1 percent of our funding. Is that the great American city we really want to be? Honestly, ask ourselves that. We want to spend less than 1% of our budget on helping the people in the community that help us. These are the agencies I'm talking about that help our most vulnerable. That's not, in my opinion, what we want to be. We want to do better. We're going to talk about fund balance coming up at our next meeting, so stick around. That's an opportunity to use fund balance to give another million to pick up the rest of these agencies or a significant amount of them. And we have that ability as a council. My point is we can do better, and I think we should in this budget. I know our CEO is here and listening. I know our mayor staff is here. We've got to do better because this is not where I want to complete our work today. I want to use this recommendation and build on it. I do have a couple of questions on the scoring system, and I appreciate the opportunity to tweak it later this year. I see, and I think a lot of agencies are very smart out there. I'm not picking on one or the other, but they've applied for multiple different grants based on need. And in the past, we awarded one grant. We scored it that way based on one agency. But some agencies are giving us multiple applications, which to me skews the scoring system because it pushes other people down based on score alone. Given the money's finite over here, I know they're going to get the same piece of the pie, but scoring-wise, when we start going 80% gets this, it pushes people down the list because they get six chances versus one agency has one chance. So I think that needs to be looked at. I think that's problematic if you're using a strict scoring system, an objective environment. When people are able to apply for more than one, I'll use big brothers, big sisters. So they could easily split it out and say, we're going to do our girls program matches and our boys separately. So that gives us two chances. If we get one of them funded, great. If we don't, but I think that needs to be looked at and how we balance that. Because some agencies are applying more than once, and that just pushes the 73 list out. The other question I was going to ask, did you look at agencies that work closely within government? Was that question asked and identified? For instance, the children's advocacy works closely with our police department. And what would happen if we didn't have that service anymore? What would our police do? Do we ask those questions in these interviews? Right now, that's not one of the scoring criteria. Not at all. That's something we could look at for improvement. Well, and I think it should be looked at because if they're doing a service that government should otherwise be doing, I think that's value added as well. And this serves at least some discussion about because the big question is if you don't have a program like that, what happens with our police department? And maybe they can comment on what they would have to do. Would they have to pick up the tab somewhere else? Because someone has to do that work that works still there. So I was just curious if there's any other organizations that work closely within government that we didn't fund or receive reduced funding that would hurt our services internally. I can take a look back at the list just because there's so many applications. I would need to take a look back through that to really do some analysis to get you an answer on that. Wasn't your question that there was a statutory? Yeah, there is one criteria that if an agency, if there's a statutory requirement to fund the agency, that's one of the criteria that they can apply under. But there's been a lot of discussion as to whether or not any agency truly fits that definition or that criteria. And frankly, we haven't really needed to use it a lot because all of those agencies fit one of those other six funding priorities anyway. So we haven't put much emphasis on that. Well, I do appreciate my time, but I do appreciate your all's work and the community's work for volunteering in this process because it's much better than when it used to be. It's getting to the point of hopefully we can refine it even better next year. But I do think there's always an opportunity to improve, and when we balance the budget and the mayor makes a recommendation to council, I'm sure there will be further discussion on certain groups, and that's natural. That's human nature, and I welcome those discussions going forward. So thank you, Craig. I appreciate all your hard work, too. Thank you, Councilmember Standing. Next is Council Member Ellinger. Thank you, Chair. And like my other colleagues here, I want to thank everybody who participated because I think the process is getting fine-tuned and getting much better. And I think we're getting closer to true needs of what the community is. Now, I do wonder, how did we go from last year, the 85-75 to 50, and where do we come up with the 95-85-75? I didn't understand where we made that change. Well, the funding work group, when they met, they were looking at last year's scoring or last year's percentages that were allocated, and we let them know that those agencies, a number of agencies, received 51% of their funding last year. And essentially the result of that was that they had the option to reduce their outcomes by 49%, consistent with the funding that they received. So this year there was an emphasis on trying to fund those agencies, trying to fund those programs as high as they possibly could while still funding as many programs as they could in order to have the greatest amount of impact. Rather than going down to that 50% level and having such a reduction in the outcomes, they were trying to keep it higher, so they established 75% as their minimum threshold. By doing that, though, it looked like only 40% of the agencies, 29, got funded applications out of the 73, so there was 44 that didn't get any funding? Right. And if we applied, just by way of example, if we applied this same list using last year's criteria, not too many more would have been funded just because the requests have gone up and so on. Commissioner, could you come to the microphone please? Total request was about 3.5, I think. The big difference is the amount of requests. Last year we had 3.5 million requested and 2.3 million to give away. So it's a lot easier to disperse the money when you're that close in the request and the award. This year we had $6.3 million for $2.3 million. It's like we had two-thirds as many requests. We funded more than a third of the applications, and we had about enough money to fund a third. So the big difference this year is the amount of requests went up by over $3 million. So it's harder to fund everybody through any scenario. And I think the other thing that played into these percentages, Council Member Ellinger, when the committee, when the group decided to go by score, some of the people that scored like at 124 might have had a huge request, which wouldn't have allowed them to have funded everybody in that range without adding more money. So since we had a target amount, I think the work group was very prudent, and they wanted to go for impact. So that's why they chose. But Craig did give them a lot of different scenarios with a lot of different amounts, and they felt that one fit best. Right. Yeah, looking at the 2.3 available to the 6.3 request, only 36 percent was going to be able to be funded. I guess, could you add in maybe a column that had the FY14 funding into each particular one? just because I'd like, how many of the 44 that are here did receive money for fiscal year 14 that aren't going to receive funding for 15? Sure. I have that information. I'd be glad to provide that. I think that's all I have right now. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Ellinger. Next is Council Member Akers. Thank you, Chair. I, too, want to thank everybody involved. I know there was a lot of community involvement and So I want to thank those who volunteered as well as Beth and her office and staff for, again, doing, I know, what is really hard work, narrowing this down by a third, like you said. Craig, were there any priorities given to the categories that were identified? There were not. So those weren't prioritized in any way? No, any priority came in terms of that three-point bonus going for the needs. but the funding work group didn't work from a basis of prioritizing any one category over another. Can we get a copy of the scoring tool again? Sure. Is that possible? I mean, I know that we received it last year or last spring, I guess, but I'm just a little bit concerned. I, too, don't want to criticize the process because I know that it's not easy and I know that you all do the best that you can, And but I think that maybe we should, as a government, set a priority on what, as a government, we think is the most important thing that we should be funding. And to me, that would be basic human needs. And maybe we should, you know, start there and then work our way up with the money that we have. But again, I guess that's a matter of opinion of what's most important. But when I look at the list of those who were funded versus some that weren't, I see some that provide basic human needs that I think should be considered. And I don't know all the details, obviously, of their applications and everything. So, again, I don't want to second-guess that. I'm just sort of thinking aloud of whether we should set a policy statement as a city of what, you know, should be our, like, just like we think that public safety is the number one priority as far as the budget goes. And then, you know, where, so in social services, what should be our first priority? Should it be basic human needs and homelessness and food and shelter, or should it be other focuses? So that's all I have for right now. And then we would have to figure out how that would translate. Sure, weighting the scores and all that. I know it's another revision or process, and I'm not suggesting we do it today, but just a consideration. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council Member. We're going to go down the list, and Council Member Scutchfield. Thank you, and thank you again. Thank you, Chair. Thank you all for putting this together. I don't think it's not an enviable task. you make people upset. I think we do have a good process set up. One of the things that we discussed, I was in the committee that helped determine the funding levels. One of the things that we did discuss, and I think it's something we do need to look forward for next year and future funding, I would like to see a cap. Last year we did not, as a council, it was voted not to have a cap on organizations I think because of the increased popularity of organizations applying I think it's quite important for us to be able to spread the wealth I guess for lack of a better term to as many organizations as we can and I think it can be a deterrent to some of the smaller organizations when we award large sums to one particular organization that just happens to apply under four, five, six different areas. One of the things that we also discussed in the committee when we determined funding that I think we would like and I think we need to discuss and forward for next year is asking for these groups to work together. We have a lot of organizations on here that give the same types of services, And I'd like to see us as a council to give priority to organizations that might work together to deliver the services. And not only will this allow for increased funding for those organizations to be able to do their purposes, but we also create more of a community for the organizations in delivering. And we don't have silos. We don't have the silos building up where one organization feels entitled to money. We create a, instead we create a community that works together. So I really would like for us looking forward on this to look at putting caps on particular, you know, organizations getting a large majority. Not that they're not, you know, they don't do great things, but I think it's a discouragement to smaller agencies. And I do having people work together to deliver vital needs in our community. Thank you all for your work. Thank you, committee. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council Member Scutchfield. And, Council Member, I want to thank you for serving again on the volunteer time on the funding committee. And thanks for that excellent point about collaboration. I think that was, I fail to remember that, but that was vividly discussed. Thanks for bringing that. We want to welcome to the committee Council Member Clark. Thank you. I will mention first that I'm not a member of the committee but interested in this very much. And I certainly will agree with everybody this is an incredibly difficult task, and I appreciate it very much. One of the questions I have is very simple. How do you maintain a standard score if you're using eight different committees? In other words, a 20 with one individual on a committee might be a 15 on another committee. And so I'm trying to wrap my head around that. If you could help me with that. It's actually not a simple question. It's one of the challenges inherent in the process. the challenge that we have is that all of our reviewers are volunteers and it's we feel like it's right to the edge of the threshold to ask them to review nine or ten applications and have a three or four hour meeting so that's that's one of the challenges we deal with is is whether there could be you know any differences in how each person would score we hope that that averages itself out because we have four or five reviewers on each committee We also do remove outliers if someone's more than 10 points different than the next closest score. That's removed from the average so that one score can't drag it down. And the other thing that we do is we provide criteria along with the scoring templates that the reviewers use. We provide criteria for each one of the scoring items, how they should derive their answer for that and what the score really means and how much they can adjust it once they get it done. So you have a sample proposal, and you kind of give them some ideas of where the score would be in each of the categories? We go beyond that. We just tell them for the information you're looking for to score item one, open up your application and go to page three, item two, and this is what you're looking for for that. Okay, good. So we point them right to it. I appreciate it. Thanks very much. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council Member Clark. We'll go next to Council Member Beard. Thank you, Chair. A couple of things, actually. If we were to go back six, seven, eight years ago, and I'm going to use it as an example here. It's not a negative thing that I'm doing, but it's just that they have multiple entities, programs, whatever. But was this the case? And I'm looking at the Hope Center. You got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven different programs. Were there seven different programs before? Or were those programs embedded in other programs or in one program? How does that work? Because I can't get my arms around things. Up until this major change to the process, we funded overall agencies rather than programs. That was one of the things we were trying to get to is funding programs and outcomes rather than the agency. So six or seven years ago, the funding would have gone generally towards the agency. It wouldn't have been split up into specific programs with specific outcomes that we would see. I guess my next question is, we give $400,000 to X program. and does that $400,000 actually stay with that program or do they have the ability to shuffle money hither and yon and against some of these other programs that we haven't agreed to put anything into? Well, the money that we approve should be used for the program and we see that. It should be, I understand. And we see that through the outcomes that they propose. I suspect what happens is that if an agency, a larger agency like the Hope Center or Salvation Army or some of the others, if they don't receive as much as they're anticipating in any one program, my guess would be that they're shifting around their organizational budget otherwise to make programs still work. But the money that we award should be going towards the program that we're doing. I understand that, but I just wondered if we audited them in any way, shape, or form, or asked some type of a statement for them that we could put in the file. We can audit them. We'll catch you a third time around. That's the second part of the committee meeting today, if we have time after comments. Amy Baker is a new program administrator with us, and she has visited individually every agency that receives our funding, and there's a report in your packet. And so that's why we can give pluses or minuses on their outcomes. If they've met the goals they said they were in the program. It's been the first year we've been able to see agencies to this level because we haven't had the staffing, and she's got some interesting things to share with you all later. My last question involves the large increase in requests compared to previous years. and and I would think that during the recession we'd have higher requests not lower requests unless they just assumed that we didn't have the money to to help them with it and so they didn't ask but now that things are a little bit better and we went through the process of the the fund balance if everybody remembers from last summer and fall. Is it in discussions with people why the extra larger requests? Well, just anecdotally, I think federal funding is getting harder and harder to get. And so agencies are looking at us because our funding is a little bit unique and that we allow funding for people, for staff, and for overhead attributed to the program. Not a lot of grant programs do that. The other thing I think is happening is the word is just getting out more in the community. People are finding out more that the money is available. They're hearing about it, and they're applying for it. So I think they're seeing some others have success, so they're following suit. Well, this whole thing you all have done over the last several years continued to tweak and tweak and tweak, and we're getting there, and there's probably going to be more tweaking next year, but thank you all very much. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Council Member Beard. I see Council Members signed for additional comments. I'd like to take the liberty just to provide my comments now, and then we'll come back, Council Member Myers and Council Member Kay. Like everybody stated, I want to thank Commissioner Mills and Craig and all the staff. What we've noticed is that this is kind of turning into a year-round process, that just as soon as we finish the award through the budget process early in August, they come back to this committee to start again. And the good news with these recommendations is that we're able to propose funding for 29 programs. I know that's only about a third or 40 percent or so of those that applied, but attempting to still have some impact. I think it's important to note that a few years ago, Councilman Myers, based on your leadership in helping us to reform and standardize this process, is that we, from a policy standpoint, said we wanted this to be a competitive process in order, again, to allow us to have greater outcomes and to maximize the limited resources that we have. I believe, in my opinion, that that also may, to a certain extent, account for one of the reasons we have higher requests. It's because hopefully now outside agencies are impressed with the way that our Department of Social Services handles this process, which is fair and accountable across the board. I also want to remind council members that, as Council Member Beer mentioned, this is an ongoing process. In the last two fiscal years, we've codified these directives to Beth and her shop through resolution. So we've been afforded to look at the application, scoring criteria, et cetera. So we want to be fair. But still, I think the pie, the demand has grown, while the pie perhaps has not. The second point I want to make is I want to clarify and disclose my reason for requesting the addendum in the packet that highlighted the amount of funds spent for homeless direct services and supplemental services. Because I want folks to remember that these partner agency fundings are general fund dollars. And I wanted to, one, just get a clear information for myself personally and to share it. The level of general fund dollars that existing that we commit towards the area of homelessness. I know that the need outweighs what we're able to give, but I think it's good information for us to have to show that we currently and historically have provided funds in that area. Last thing I want to say is in regards to partner agencies. I'm sitting next to Councilmember Ellinger, who's our budget chair, and we may get folks to clarify this later on at our next meeting. I believe the general fund partner agency funding accounts for 10 percent of all partner agency funding. And I think it's important for us to distinguish that what we're discussing today is simply the partner agency funding that goes to social services. There are many, many, many other partner agencies in this government that receive that funds. But if you look at $2.3 of $29, $30 million, that kind of shows where social services kind of stand. So, again, I want to thank you guys for your work and for this good discussion that we've had as a committee today. Next, I'll go back to Council Member Myers. thank you mr chair and i appreciate your your comments as well um so a couple years ago when we kind of started embarking down this process and we had the united way was going to be a part of that partnership with um uk and i stated back then that the reason i wanted to do that was because we needed to get to a point where we had the analytics behind what we were doing And then that would inform us that, obviously we know this, but it would inform us through analytics that we're not putting enough money behind these issues. And even without that third rung in the partnership, I think we're still there. And I think now, because of the way that you guys are getting outcomes and the way that you've got a person that's going back to the agencies and making sure the outcomes are there, the commissioner said give away, but this is really an investment. We're investing in these agencies because they're investing in our people. and I think that we have enough information now and we have a process set up so that eventually we'll be able to do a longitudinal study and say that we invested these amounts of dollars in these categories over this amount of time, and here are the outcomes as a result of that. And you've got a group here, I forgot the name of it, one of the new groups that's doing job placement in the Latino student community. Those are real outcomes that we're going to be able to see, in a few years, because of this investment, this number of people have jobs. And therefore, they're not taxing other parts of the system, if you will. And so I'm going to, so I've been transparent all along that the goal of this whole thing was to get us to the point where we could increase that 2.3 or whatever it was at the time to something more substantial to give us more impact. Because we see that we only got to 40% of the agencies today or this year, and I don't think any of them got 100% of what they asked for. So I'm going to make a motion and ask the administration between now and our next meeting, if you need two meetings, then we'll give you that too, to come back with a process by which we increase the amount that we're spending on social service partner agencies moving forward. And the reason I'm making a motion that way is because I don't know what it is. Like I said earlier, I don't know if it's going to be a formula based on how much we have in the general fund. Or if we go back and look at the needs assessment, we look at some of these outcomes and we look at, like you guys said, if we dropped it down and did 50% funding to some of these other agencies, the outcomes may not be substantial enough to do that. If it's job placement, it might be. If only 51% of the people were served, but they all got a job, that's whatever that number is, more people working. So I don't know the answer on how best to do this, but it's time we take the information we have, the analytics that we have, and the process that we have, and do something with it, rather than just keep talking about one day we'll get to this point. Okay? So my motion is that the administration put together, and it can be a couple different scenarios for us to review in this committee. Can you do it by next meeting, or do you need two months? Two. I mean, it's not going to be the final. It's going to be for discussion of this committee, so I'm not looking for something to be at the end of the day. But I want to get started. We have a motion on the floor by Council Member Myers. We have a second by Council Member Ellinger. Before we go into discussion, I would kindly ask Council Member Myers to restate your motion again for the purpose of committee discussion. Okay. Do you want two months? I would request two months because we're in the middle of budget hearings. Commissioner? Yes. Motion on the floor. Okay, so motion on the floor if you'll restate the motion for clarity for the committee. Thank you, sir. I move that we ask the administration to come back two months from now in the, not the next social service meeting, but the one after that. I'm not sure the date. with a couple of different scenarios on how we can, through a systematic process, increase the amount of dollars that we spend for social services-based partner agency spending. So moved. And it has, thanks, and Council Member Ellinger second the month. And the two months out will be May 27th. Is there a discussion on the motion? Council Member Stenning. Thank you, Chair. I appreciate the opportunity to speak on the motion. Councilman Myers, thank you for making it. My only issue with it is in two months is May 27th is our next meeting, and that's almost at the end of our budget process. So if we have any hope or desire to do it during this budget process or before, we would need to have conversation prior to May 27th, because by that time the budget's almost being finalized. So I know the commissioner asked for two months, But I think another way to approach this is if the council, during the budget discussions, maybe even during the Budget and Finance Committee, allocated another half a million or a million, how would that money be spent? Will we just go down the list, or would they want to go back and reevaluate those left again, or what would be the process? I don't know if that makes sense, Councilman Myers, but waiting two months, I think that's more of a longer-term issue of how we gradually increase it versus do we want to do anything in the short term this year. Is that what you're saying? Well, my goal is to increase it this year with this money that we're going to be talking about in the next meeting. But I appreciate what you're saying about the two months. So I'm going to change the motion if I can and make it one month. And it's not to make it hard on you, but it's just that that meeting is probably going to be canceled and moved into the budget process. Okay. Council, if my second. That'd be April 22nd. Okay. The motion has been amended and it has been seconded by Council Member Ellinger to reduce the reporting time to one month till our April 22nd meeting of the committee. Is there further discussion on the amended motion? Council Member K. Thank you, Chair. Council Member Myers, I thought when you proposed your motion that you were really talking about the longer term, at least slightly longer. And I would suggest that we separate those two things out. I'm interested in having a further conversation about the amount that we have to allocate. I think that could be next month. But I think the question of how we develop over the long term other sources and how we think about our allocation could wait a couple months and give them time to prepare more of a plan. Can I ask a question? Commissioner and C.O. Hamilton, would it be possible to put together some concepts by the next meeting and then let us look at those and then come back after the budget process is over? and try to nail something down? Does that make sense? Or do you just want to put it all the way off until after the budget process? I'm going to sort of concentrate on the budget issue first, if that's all right. By the end of, by the 30th of March, we're going to put the administration's budget to bed. So then, of course, it can be tweaked all the way through. I had just asked Beth when you all said, would you give her one month? I said, I need it next week. If I've got a number that we would like to get into that budget, I need to get that number in the budget. Or if the administration chooses not to do that, then you would have plenty of time to get a real calculated number. so it's almost it's almost two things if we want to add another half a million you know this year or or how we're going to approach it i've got to think my way through it a minute yeah yeah i'd like to say that there's probably two different issues goes back to what council member k said for this year this is purely a recommendation and as you know last year additional funds were added but the mayor and the council both worked with the recommendation that was given. I think what you're asking for is an ongoing policy that this percentage of the budget, or this may not even be a percentage, it may be that this will be the level of funding. Whatever we come up with would be codified, just like your resolution that would move forward. I don't think that we could get you that well thought out, and y'all could debate that in time for this year's budget. So I think we're two different things. This year's budget's one thing, and the policy going forward, I think that's probably a good discussion so i i don't understand why that couldn't wait two months instead of one just my opinion okay so so then it's probably going to be three because i don't think we're going to have that that may meeting but that that works that works for me so so steve in order to go back to what you're saying there's two issues so what we do in the budget this year that's not what we're talking about right now we're talking about the policy that we try to codify moving forward and So if they need more time, because they do need time to focus on this current budget, so let's just push it off for three months and then come back to this committee in the June 17th. So I'm in the motion to ask the administration to come back with that policy recommendation for the June 17th meeting. So moved. Second. The motion has been amended and it has been seconded graciously to extend the policy directive until June 17th. Is there any discussion from the committee? All in favor signify by saying aye. Opposed? That motion carries. Thank you, Council Member Myers. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Commissioner. Thank you, Ms. Sally. Is that the amendment or the amendment? You just have the amendment. Yeah, you do. that's the amendment thank you thank you for that the motion as amended now we'll call for the the vote any final discussion all in favor signify by saying aye aye opposed that motion carries thank you councilmember meyers thank you next to speak up is councilmember k thank you chair um i've got notes all over a page here and i'm trying to see where they all go but i'm going going to try and kind of put it back together again if I can. And it follows up mostly on what people have already said. But a couple things. First, my understanding is that we engage the University of Kentucky to do a needs assessment, and that that would be the basis for actually indicating weights to the various criteria. So we might have a set of criteria. Each of them now has five points, whatever it has. The thought was some of those criteria may be more important than others. And I'm interested in continuing to look at that. I think that's a part of what we need to do. That's part of the way in which we set policy about what we want to fund. Secondly, this council had a fairly long conversation last year about whether we were in the business of funding ongoing programs or innovative or creative programs. and that was one of the criteria that was included in the mix for this year. That is itself a policy decision. If that now, in the judgment of counsel, is not working very well and is penalizing the more basic services that some people provide, then I think we need to look at that. So I guess what I'm interested in on an ongoing basis in this committee, Chair and members, is a review of a number of questions that have been raised. One, maybe first and foremost, is a total allocation that this government makes for the social service partner agencies. Secondly, what has just been passed, which is a look at how we increase not just our allocation, but the other sources of funds that we might be able to leverage, find, et cetera, grants, et cetera, all of that kind of a conversation, so that the pool is enlarged not just with government money, but with outside money. I think the third thing is really this question about whether we are funding vital services, ongoing services, innovative programs. Basically, what are we in the business of doing? And I believe that all of the PONDER agencies can help us with that. Everyone who made an application is going to get information back about how they scored, what the decision, the basis for that decision. And as you look at that, if there are aspects of that which you believe disadvantage your program unfairly, I believe that's information that the Social Services Department and the council and the rest of the administration needs to see and hear. Very specific information about the ways in which the present system, as set up, advantages or disadvantages your program. and finally I think what we have been trying to do over the past few years is develop a system that is as fair as possible other people have said this it needs to continue to be tweaked so that in fact the process reflects the policy decisions that this council and this government makes about what we need to fund and not fund and that is an ongoing conversation which I hope we will continue to have. The end of the story, I think, is that council always has the prerogative to make changes. As has been emphasized repeatedly, these are recommendations. The danger is that we do not want to go back to a situation where every decision is a political decision, and council's being lobbied and what comes out of that is an overturn of a process that we think is fair and transparent. We want to uphold the system. We want to tweak the system. We want to provide council with some opportunities to make changes. Fair enough, but we want to be careful, I think, about how we do that. So thank you for all this good work. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council Member Kaye. Is there any other discussion from the committee? Seeing none, I would like to take this opportunity to invite those who've taken time out of the schedule to come and join this discussion. We have a few folks representing agencies who have signed up, and I'll call those. First, we have Janice James, May Suramek, and Bruce Simpson. If you guys will come forward. So we'd ask that all speakers give us your name, your address, and your agency, and we'll kindly provide you three minutes. Welcome, Janice. Hey. I'm Janice James. I live at 2196 Lakeside Drive, and I'm the Administrative Deputy Director at the Hope Center. And first, let me say we are very grateful for the programs that we have funded. We do have a lot of programs. We started in 1992 out of an ordinance for the city to provide homeless services to the men in Lexington. And part of our challenge was to create programs that guided the root causes of the homelessness. But the basic service that we provided was bringing in people to the emergency shelter to, one, keep them alive, and, two, try to engage them into these programs that would help them turn their lives around and become self-sufficient. And we have done that in that we've built six additional buildings since then, and one of our programs that was funded is completely in the detention center. So part of the question that I would have for, I guess, the powers that be here in this funding process is our emergency shelter was not funded. And so we serve, particularly this winter, we served a lot of people during cold nights and the word would go out, anybody can come in. We don't turn anybody away. You can stay all day. I mean, we serve like 2,000 different guys every year, unduplicated. Then others have multiple stays and longer stays. And, you know, it's like 250 a night during the inclement weather, 180 to 200 on those other nights. So that emergency shelter is not funded for the first time that I can recall since I've worked at the Hope Center, so that's 12 years. And we do have a lot of programs now, and perhaps the, I guess I'm asking, what is the takeaway message? Do we not need emergency shelter anymore? Is it our responsibility to go through fundraising with individuals and churches to try to gather the income to run the emergency shelter, or do we run it at a reduced level? Some of the same questions were asked last year when Salvation Army wasn't funded. I mean, to me, the emergency shelter pulls people in off the street, and it's something that we have to have. And if we don't provide it, somebody has to do it. So I really would ask what the takeaway message is here. Do we not need the emergency shelter not a priority anymore? Should we focus on our other programs? It was one below the funding. It was a big request. so to fund it would have probably been more complicated, but it was one-half point below the funding. So that would be my request is what is the takeaway. Raise as much money as we can, which we do. We only requested half the money to run the emergency shelter. We do raise money. And for basic services like emergency shelter, there's not many grants available. Pretty much you have to go to donations in your local government for that. donations from churches, donations from individuals, and your local government pretty much funds shelters. Substance abuse, mental health, or other opportunities for that. So that's my question. If we don't fund the emergency shelter, give us direction to do the best we can to provide the services based on how much we can raise or reduce capacity. Thank you, Janice. Committee members, what I would like to do is we have five folks from the public that want to speak, but Janice if you'll stay there. Your comments have generated questions from the committee that I would like to allow to be addressed right now. And we'll try to commit to make sure all five folks who've signed up get a chance to speak. Council Member Kay. Thank you, Chair. And thank you, Janice. My question is this. Can you help us understand the differences in the list, the addendum we were given there are two programs listed Hope Center Men's Recovery Program and the Hope Center Women's Recovery Program. Who do they serve? How do they serve? Two different buildings, two different programs. Women's program is located on Vercels Road. Men's program is separate from the shelter on Loudoun Avenue. We pull people that we engage from the community and from the shelter into those programs who have substance abuse addiction problems. It's a large population. So, again, this list was about the homeless population. So what you're saying is for the recovery programs, there are some people in those programs who come from the homeless shelter. Absolutely. That's the idea because it's a root cause of homelessness is to pull them out of that shelter, to let them know their life can be different, and provide a program to help them change their lives. But they go to a different building. But in those other programs, there are other people from the community who are part of that who receive those services. Is that correct? Say that again now. People who are not in the homeless shelter, who are not necessarily homeless, but who need those services, provided those services in the recovery program. There are some that come. Our jail program, people come from the jail directly. When they complete a substance abuse program in the jail, they can come directly into our community program, and they need that to transition out. But they could be released into our shelter or they could come into our recovery program. The only other exception is a contract we have with the Department of Corrections. But everybody else on the men's side feeds through the shelter. It's people who come in there, and they see that life can be different. Okay. So in terms of we're thinking about basic services, you'd say that those programs and the shelter are all what you would consider basic services and needed? I consider the emergency shelter the service that pulls people in off the street and keeps them alive. That's the basic needs. The other building is Drug and Alcohol Recovery Program. They start out as homeless, a lot of them, yes. But you pull people off. We've got, talking about partnerships, we have the Health First has a health clinic at the shelter. Bluegrass comes in to deliver services to the chronically mentally ill. That is where you engage people and try to get them to turn their lives. It takes a while for a lot of them, but that's the shelters where you pull people in off the streets. Okay, thank you very much. Thank you chair. Thank you Councilmember Kaye Councilmember Akers So councilmember Kaye sort of touched on where what I was going to ask as well I am familiar with all of your programs the differences in the the privet center and the women's on Versailles and All of the different programs, so I guess my question to you I agree with you a hundred percent that the shelter should be the first funding and then we should look at various programs, but basic human needs. And if you didn't provide the services to the men at the shelter, we would have to. So my question would be, how would you rank your programs? And if we decided, okay, we'll give you whatever, 75%, 50% of your ask of half a million for the emergency shelter program, would you then, could we take away one or part or any of the other programs because that's the decision we have to make someone has to make well that's what you're sort of advocating for here i'm just making the point that yes and no i'm just making the point that emergency shelter is a service that not that is life-saving and a basic need the other programs build upon that so yes but i don't think that we're allowed to move money around we tried that the first year. The shelter's the hardest part to raise money for. Right. And, you know, I have the background and work in social services myself, and so I know that the federal government is not interested in funding shelters anymore, and that's why a lot of the Salvation Army and you all come to the government to help subsidize that, because somebody has to do it. Right. So I'm going to, I guess, okay, that's all for now. Thank you. Thanks, too. Thank you, Council Member Akers. We want to welcome Council Member Henson to committee. Thank you, Chair. Thank you for the opportunity to speak. I'm not a member of this committee, but I have a great interest in this topic. And Janice, thank you for bringing this forward. And I think that this council has some work that needs to be done. I applaud the Hope Center for I gave a speech or whatever you want to say about lifting people out of poverty, lifting people up to where they need to be, and you all do an excellent job of that. Another thing that concerns me a great deal about the funding that's been proposed is I know that you serve people that probably benefit from some of these other agencies that didn't receive funding. And I didn't know if you had wanted to comment on that or if you've taken a look. You mentioned Health First. I don't think that they're in this, but there may be. That's a real concern of mine is that we have to look at the whole person and we have to help them every way we can. You do referrals to other agencies. and not to be able to fund our homeless shelter where they begin. Right. And just, I mean, there is so much partnership that occurs between agencies. I mean, when you talk about, yeah, we make different requests, but we work together. Again, like just at the shelter, there are so many of the services that are used in town, both coming to our program and taking them to other programs. So there's hardly anybody that's been funded that doesn't partner with the clients that we serve. We all really, I mean, we have to compete for our dollars for operation, but we all work together because we're all interested in the same outcome. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council Member. Thank you, Janice. Next to speak, we have May Cermak. If you give your address, your agency, and you'll have three minutes. Hello, can you hear me? My name is Mae Cermick, and I'm the executive director of the Bluegrass Rape Crisis Center. I actually reside at 180 Dale Avenue in Berea, Kentucky, but I commute 47 minutes one way every day to Lexington. Like I said, I'm the executive director of the Bluegrass Rape Crisis Center. The reason I'm still able to live in Berea is because we cover 17 counties in the Bluegrass region, and I wanted to thank, first start off by thanking the funding work group. I know this was an impossible task that you had ahead of you, and I just am really grateful for the process and the transparency. I also wanted to thank the council for a 40-year funding partnership with the Bluegrass Rape Crisis Center, and I want to start off today by telling you how I spent the last hour of my day yesterday. We serve, like I said, 17 counties with a mission to eradicate sexual violence through counseling, advocacy, and education. But yesterday, for the last hour of the day, our 16-member staff, that's right, there's only 16 of us covering 17 counties, we sat and tried to figure out how to provide on-call coverage during holiday weekends. Because last year, we provided 87 medical advocacies, which means that twice a week in Lexington alone, which means that twice a week in Lexington hospitals, a member of our staff or a member of our volunteer pool is at the hospital with a victim of rape and holding her hand and helping her through her options, his or her options. So we have to figure out how to, on top of our day jobs, how to make sure that we are available to provide that service. And again, this is just Lexington. I signed up for primary on-call duty for July 4th weekend, which means I cannot partake in any festivities, and I have to have that phone near me at all times. In addition to those 87 medical advocacies that we provided last year, we also provided 680 crisis line calls, 58 legal advocacies, 846 therapy sessions, 609 crisis counseling services, and 147 group counseling sessions in Lexington alone. Now, you may or may not know that 49% of women and 19.6% of men in Kentucky are victims of sexual violence. And that is a high number, and Lexington is certainly not immune to that. Unfortunately, this year, we are one of the two-thirds of those agencies that is being recommended for 0% funding. And this, unfortunately, translates to one-tenth of our budget. And this also translates to us not being able to help increase the social functioning of victims impacted by trauma, which, by the way, research indicates that there is a direct link between trauma and other issues such as substance abuse, mental illness, and economic self-sufficiency. With this current budget recommendation, the city will not be funding any services for victims of rape and sexual violence. And this will impact the Bluegrass Rape Crisis Center, as well as our community partners, the Children's Advocacy Center, who I believe you'll be hearing from here in a bit. And I know that this does not reflect the values of our compassionate community. This, in case you don't know, and I wish Diane Lawless was here because she could tell you this story firsthand. Lexington was the first community in the state that started a rape crisis center. We're the first rape crisis center in the state. We're the first 24-hour crisis hotline. And unfortunately, there's a lot more work to be done. And I just asked the council to, and I've already heard some promise of that, but ask the council to really help us think about ways that we can continue to do this important and critical work in our community with your support and help. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Saramick. Any questions? This is a question from Council Member Myers. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you for coming in today. I just have a quick question. Could you tell us how much funding you received from partner raising last year? From the council last year? we received approximately $98,000. Okay. And it is my understanding, I've only been in the position for about a year and a half, it is my understanding that we have received some funding every year since you've been giving funding to partner agencies. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Thank you again, Ms. Saramay. May? May? Council Member Beard, do you have a question? Good job, May. Yes, sir. You mentioned on a couple or three occasions that you serviced XYZ number of people in Lexington alone. Do you have a broader reach than Fayette County? And if you do, do you get money from these other counties? We do. We cover 17 counties in the Bluegrass Ad District, and we do receive funding from the federal government, state general funds, hopefully United Way again, and private donations. But the governments of these other counties? Oh, the governments of the other towns. And cities, for that matter. Minimal funding. Minimal. Yes. Let us do it instead. Most don't have budgets. Like I live in Berea and Madison County does not have money set aside for partner agencies like ours. That's what I wanted to know. Thank you so much. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council Member Beard. Attorney, welcome. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, I'm Bruce Simpson. Attorney in Lexington, I'm here today on behalf of the Children's Advocacy Center of the Bluegrass. We were one of the agencies that applied for funding, but we did not make the cut. Certainly, I feel awkward in being in a competitive environment with so many well-deserving agencies for a finite amount of government funds, because there are certainly many worthwhile organizations that have besieged you for funding. However, the Children's Advocacy Center is different in the sense that 60% of what we do is law enforcement related. For more than 20 years, our agency has been the exclusive agency, privately funded, with no assistance from the urban county government, to protect victims of child sexual abuse. We work with the police department and the Commonwealth attorneys in making cases for prosecution of child sexual predators and also in providing aftercare trauma services for these very victims of child sexual abuse. No other agency, no other group in our community is empowered by law to perform these kinds of services. We, in essence, 60% of what we do is privately funded, but it is strictly government-oriented. We have not come before this body before because we have struggled to make ends meet. However, in the last several years, unfortunately, the demand for our services has outgrown our facilities and our staff. We were not able to maintain confidentiality in our forensic interviews of victims of child sexual abuse, and we were forced to relocate, which we did last year, to the former Hearing and Speech Center on North Ashland to the cost of our agency of $750,000. The police are constantly on our property. The prosecutors are constantly on our property. But for us, Ray Larson and the Crimes Against Children unit would tell you they would have an extremely difficult time in making cases against perpetrators of child sexual abuse. I know there's many deserving agencies, But we very much believe our $70,000 request, which represents only 11% of our budget, when 60% of our time is government-oriented, is not only reasonable, it is necessary for our survival and to provide the kind of services that the victims of child sexual abuse need in the Fayette County area. I thank you for your attention. I would ask for an amendment to the list to recognize those agencies who do governmental-oriented work to the tune of 60% of their services, that they need to be looked at differently. As Council Member Stennett asked the question and as Craig Vance responded, that factor was not part of the point selection in this evaluation process. It's not too late to amend it. We need this help to continue to provide the services that are so desperately needed. I thank you for your attention. I'm certainly available for any questions. Thank you, Attorney. Any questions from the committee? Council Member Myers. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I had a few questions, but you've actually done an excellent job of explaining things, and you've answered all my questions up front. But I guess I would ask maybe if Craig could come up for just a second. You spoke to, when Council Member Sennett asked the question, things that we had to do by ordinance or statute. Is that what you were referring to here? Because I think this is a different situation where if we have people that are working directly with law enforcement and they need that work done, and this is the only group that does it, do we take into account agencies not that are mandated by statute or ordinance, but agencies that work directly with law enforcement or a particular part of government that we can't do that work except for them? Right now, that last criteria for agencies that are required by statute or ordinance would be just that, that the council or state statute, we would be required to fund them. There would be some kind of codified partnership, and that doesn't exist in this case. So we don't right now have a criteria for partnerships with the LFUCG as part of our scoring criteria. Okay. It seems to me that that's something that we ought to look at. If this is work that they're doing with the police department that we can't do, and somebody has to do it or they can't make these cases. So I guess as Council Member Kaye said, we want to keep our process intact, but maybe now is the time to look at making an adjustment. Can you look into how many other organizations that might fit this category? Sure. I'd be glad to take a look at that. The only comment I would make is I think if we're going to go in that direction, we have to be very careful that the process doesn't turn to favoring those agencies that are working with LFUCG rather than those agencies that are working with clients in the community. I would hate to see the process take that turn. And I wouldn't want it to be that broad. I don't mean just anybody who's working with LFUCG because that's probably everybody. let's just look at that if it's law enforcement and you're looking at the court system and a criminal action that's taking place and the courts and the police department need assistance in making those cases that's different than working with us in any other way I in my belief so okay thank you thank you Mr. Chair thank you Councilmember Meyer Thank you, Attorney. Committee, we have two additional guests who want to speak. I'd invite Mr. Mark Royce to join us, and then Mr. Phil Gunning can follow Mr. Royce. Hello, my name is Mark Royce. I live at 2341 Southgate Drive in Lexington, and I'm the executive director of AIDS Volunteers Incorporated, AVOL. And again, I want to thank the committee. I want to thank the Department of Social Services. This is a daunting task, obviously, with lots of people who provide important services, and there's simply more need than there is money. And that's something we're very used to in the nonprofit world and in the social services world. We are an agency last year that was very excited to be awarded partner agency status. We were funded at the 51% level, and we have developed a fantastic program, which during the past year has led us to understand that there's an even greater need. So we asked this year to have that funding even increased. And unfortunately, we were not funded, selected, or recommended to be funded. Again, it's one of those confusion. It's a little frustrating and a little confusing because in terms of score, our score was basically the same as last year. We would have been funded under last year's percentage breakdown. But again, I realize the addition of requests also skews that number. But it's when you're looking down the list and seeing the zero dollar signs, it's kind of tough. AVOL is the only agency in Fayette County that provides the services that we provide in terms of educating folks. We are public health. We are prevention. And again, there are always pressing dire service needs that some people would argue take precedence over education and prevention. I think they're very much entwined and the work that we do saves the local government a tremendous amount of money that you never know about because it never comes up because we've taken care of it. I would say that the reason that we've come to you is because of cuts in federal funding. And as was stated earlier, the local government is now sort of the sole source that we can go to who can choose to provide assistance. And I would also say that of the agencies who are providing funding, a lot of them are moving from a one-year funding cycle to longer periods. So in terms of creating a program, developing a program, and having time to let it grow and collect data, United Way, for example, moved from annual funding to a three-year funding cycle. I know that most of the federal funding has moved from a one-year funding to a five-year funding. And so that would be potentially a suggestion for this committee to think about. I know it's tough when it's an annual budget. So I am here because I represent my board. I represent the clients, low-income men and women living with HIV AIDS, and also the people in this community who are at risk for HIV AIDS, many of whom are served by the other people that you have heard from today. Thank you for your time. I appreciate it. Thank you, Mark. Councilman Rakers. Hi, Mark. Hi. Can you tell me a little bit about the program that you requested funding for? There's nothing on our sheet that, was it just general services provided? I mean, I'm familiar with the agency, but was there a specific program you requested funding for, or was it general services? Basically, all education and prevention funding has been cut from any money that we get. So in order for us to just let people know what HIV is, and you think if you're older and you live through the first wave of HIV, that that would be a very obvious thing. We have kids who are 18, 19, 20 who have never heard of HIV. They were in abstinence-only sex education classes. Actually, one of my prevention workers was at a drive-thru at McDonald's and just talking about what she did. And the woman who was waiting on her said, now, is HIV the same thing as HPV? Do I get the vaccination for that? No clue as to what it was. So that's what we're, we are trying to fill a gap in education that doesn't exist because people, and especially low-income folks, don't, there are a lot of other things for low-income folks that are higher on the list than their HIV status. but knowing your HIV status, being connected to care can stop the spread of the disease and can reduce lifetime health costs. We can give you a condom for free that costs us maybe seven cents, but a lifetime of HIV care is $488,000, and if the person is indigent or low income, then that is the burden of the state and taxpayers. So prevention, it's tough to measure those costs, but we believe that it's important. Okay, thank you very much. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Councilman Breakers. Thank you, Mr. Royce. We'll also now call on Mr. Gunning. Hello, I'm Phil Gunning. I live at 3407 Winthrop Drive, and I'm the Executive Director of NAMI Lexington, and I want to thank you for this opportunity. I came to tell you all about our wonderful program that was one of those that was funded last year and not this year. and after hearing all the thoughtful questions and comments from the committee and the others here, I'm not so sure I want to go through all that. I do want to speak, though, as an advocate for folks with serious mental illness and their families. there's a continuum of illness with serious mental illness that runs from people who have very challenging situations and are psychotic delusional hear voices so on so forth all the way up to folks who are well into recovery and are employed and are helping their peers try to make it through that continuum we need services all along that continuum and I would tell you that our program does provide services all along that continuum we're currently serving homeless folks and we're currently providing a peer support team under contract with UK Health Care to perform services at Eastern State Hospital I would just like to also note that mental health and substance abuse services are it's one category and we note unless we don't know what some of the agencies do but we work with most all the agencies and think we do we note that 80% of the money in that category that's recommended for funding is for substance abuse while we fully believe those services are needed that doesn't always also address mental illness. In fact, some of the substance abuse treatment programs don't do a very good job at all of treating mental illness. There are some that treat them as co-occurring disorders simultaneously, and those work well, but there's few of those. So I just wanted to bring that to the committee's attention. A couple of other comments that ahead that came out of the questions that you brought forth one was councilman Ford mentioned the percentage of the requested funds that's being awarded and how that number was arrived at and and we don't question the process at all we know this is hard work and it's wonderful I just wanted to note that we received 51% of our funding last year and we were able to do wonderful things with that much money and the funding that we have put together for the participation station program has allowed us to leverage other funding that's allowed us to employ more peer specialists certified Kentucky peer specialists which are consumers of mental health services that help other consumers we employ more of those folks than anyone else in the state The folks that are providing services throughout the state under contracts that we have to provide peer services are based in Lexington. They work in Lexington. They live in Lexington. Three of them are now property owners in Lexington, two of them through your REACH program. So it is possible that you can get 51% of what you request and still leverage that into doing some really wonderful things. I think really that that's the comments that I wanted to make. We appreciate what you all do and how hard this work is. And it's very difficult, as someone else mentioned, to stand up here and feel like you're in a competitive environment with all the agencies that you have to work with on a daily basis in order to keep that safety net in place, safety net. There is one other comment someone asked about. There seem to be a whole lot more requests. funding now and maybe that's because federal funds was so on and so forth. I can only speak to mental health services. With the advent of managed care Medicaid, we are really struggling to keep our safety net in place. Last year right after we received funding from LFUCG partner agency program, the treatment, the day treatment program that Bluegrass runs was closed down. That was because only one of the three managed care organizations at that time were providing reimbursement for that service. So it's no longer there. That's just one story. The services are just falling off. Managed care is making it so difficult to process some of them, and other ones are just not reimbursing. So for mental health, and that's all I can speak to, there probably is some more pressure coming into the community because of what's going on at the federal and state level and with managed care in particular. It might be that the community does have to respond to more requests than previously. I thank you for this opportunity. Answer any questions you might have. Thank you, Mr. Gunning. Are there any questions or comments from the committee? Thank you for coming. Thank you for your time. Committee members, that concludes agenda item number two. I want to thank everybody. This has been a good discussion. Every council member and committee member present has had the opportunity to chime in with questions and comments. And Sally and Beth, I hope that this gives us a start to go forward as we look forward to fiscal year 16. What I will say is that it always appears that this forecast of the recommendations to the mayor kind of starts the fiscal year 15 process publicly for all of government. So we thank you guys for your hard work. Commissioner, if it's okay, I'm going to ask if Amy will be okay to present to us with more time at our April 22nd meeting, if that is okay. Is that okay with the committee? Very good. Next on the agenda is number four, workforce development. And quickly, committee members, I will just, at our last meeting, I asked that this issue remain in our committee pending the presentation of the audit report from the state auditor of the Bluegrass Area Development District. That report was issued, I guess, about two weeks ago, and it has some pretty interesting findings in it. I've publicly stated a long time now to refocus on our job training efforts. We do some things here in our government. We have some priorities and policies that we've set that deal with job creation and workforce development. But I still contend that there's a population in Fayette County, in my district and across other districts, that could really benefit from job training. And I think that we need to examine, I'm still in the process of examining the audit to see the findings as it pertains to Bluegrass Workforce Investment Board. But what I would like to say is to throw that out there, but there is, as it pertains to the Bluegrass ad, who is the fiscal agent of the Bluegrass Workforce Investment Board. there is a similar agenda item in the general government committee that speaks to our relationship with the ad. And I think that's going to hopefully come before the general government committee soon. And I guess these two issues are kind of parallel to a certain extent. The council will recall as it relates to the ad, we withheld our $75,000 odd amount in dues for this fiscal year pending the outcome of that audit. And so we'll examine that. I hope to bring forth some resolution that will guide us towards more clearly examining, taking steps towards the workforce area. I don't think we do it prematurely, but I think we need to move that way. And so I hope to bring that forth in context of the other committee work and then what we're doing here. Councilmember Myers. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And I agree with you 100%. And I think that there's an opportunity to both work this issue in this committee as well as the other committee. And I think we start with some of the things that came out of not only the audit but from the AG's opinion. and specifically the AG's opinion in that the ad cannot do anything in a community unless that community invites them to be a partner in what they're doing. And I think that guidance right there, and I hope to at one point see that codified in the state law, I think that's the real opportunity is that we come up with what we want to invite them to be a part of and then work towards that happening. So I look forward to as you continue to bring things to this committee and we work in the other committee as well. Thank you, Council Member Myers. Any further discussion on this issue that we'll keep in committee? Council Member Henson. Thank you, Chair. And I agree. I think this is the perfect opportunity for us to examine, look at this. And, you know, in our previous conversation about our partner agencies and just when we look at our community as a whole, everything is so important. So, and one thing that our social service does is work with many, many low-income people. So I see workforce investment, jobs fund, affordable housing, all of those items really playing a role in lifting people up. So thank you, Council Member Ford and Myers. Thank you, Council Member Henson. Next we have Council Member Clark. Thank you, Sheriff. I also want to reiterate my concern about workforce investment and the ad participation. The more I've studied this issue and talked to some of you about it, the more concerned I am about what we can do to promote workforce investment. I think we have to take this very seriously, and as some of you in the audience know that I'm all about the connections. and connections to me means we've talked about homelessness, we've talked about affordable housing. It seems like to me workforce investment for this community is also connected very seriously to those issues as well. So I want to be on the record of saying that. Thank you very much, Chair. Thank you, Council Member Clark. Go back to Council Member Myers. Mr. Chair, I was just wondering if Commissioner Mills, as we continue to work on our relationship with the ad that you might look at. One of the things that I asked for a while back, and I can't remember if it was in this committee related to the ad or the other committee related to the ad, was what all services and programs they provide and what we would have access to. And maybe this is an opportunity to look at that in light of our shortfall in terms of funding partner agencies. and are there things that partner agencies do that monies that go to the ad could help fund? And I know with aging, they're doing some things. I know there's some things happening, but I'd encourage you to look at that, too, as we look at our partnership with the ad. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Council Member Meyers. The last thing that I will say is, and this is, of course, no new news to many folks here in our government, is that heretofore we've had a very direct leadership role in workforce and job training here in our government, and I think that this, again, provides an opportunity for us to recapture and reestablish that leadership role. Lastly on the agenda are items referred in committee. Again, I hope to keep workforce in the committee, and then we will, Amy, gladly bring you back to our committee on April 22nd. Are there any other discussion on items in committee? Hearing none, is there a motion to adjourn? Moved by Council Member Beard, second by Council Member Scutchfield. We are adjourned. We'll convene on April 22nd. Thank you.