Last Friday morning I spent time at a 3.5 – 4 hour meeting, trying to figure out what was going on with funding for City of Madison Community Services for 2011. Yes, I said 2011. For some reason, at the same time some are fighting to get their cost of living increase from the city for 2010, we are also discussing potential complete loss of funding in 2011.
What I think this all boils down to is rearranging desk chairs on the Titanic. We don’t have enough money to meet the needs in the community, the city has grown, there are new needs and we’re trying to shuffle what ends up being not enough money. Staff answered alot of questions and kept their cool while being grilled about a very difficult situation.
We were there to talk about what the priorities should be and respond to this document. But, it was clear that the issues went far beyond whether to use the word “systemic” or something else. Here’s some of the many questions I heard raised and many of them have no answers at the moment.
1. They wanted to break us into groups and have us talk about each of the subject areas, but many didn’t know where they fit. So, that’s the first question, where do the currently funded and potentially funded agencies fit in the larger categories. A good example was the Girl Neighborhood Power program, is it a youth program, or a program that targets a specific population? They aren’t putting the groups in categories at the moment, so many of us are uncertain if we fit in a category that will be funded or not.
2. A question is aseked how much money is going to which category and what is the process to decide where the money goes. What will the priorities be to determine where the money goes? Will money be assigned to all priority levels within the group, or will the A-1 funded programs get funded til the money runs out? Apparently, there will be a document discussed Thursday morning at 7:30 where they will reveal the amount, I’m not sure the priorities will really be revealed.
3. What is the reasons for changing the categories? Clingan says they went through it at the Labor Temple two weeks ago. (I wasn’t able to make it as I was out of town for work, so I don’t know what they said at that time.)
4. Does this mean that we can write for new programs? History has been we couldn’t, we were told what the cost of living increase was going to be and discouraged from applying for what we actually needed to fund the program.
5. When will the the best practices that explain more about the goals we available? Will there be research and national standards cited otherwise it just feels like the opinion of staff. Staff explain that will be available with the application. There seemed to be a strong sentiment that we need to know what that says now in order to know if the priorities are correct, as many of the details will be in that document. They say there will be more discussions about that in the future.
6. What will happen when new programs come in and they meet the A-1 priorities, will their track record be considered? They haven’t talked about that yet.
7. Will the current groups still get funded? They can’t promise that.
8. VanRooy talks about struggle between being specific about what they want and being more vague and giving groups room to be creative. They haven’t decided which direction to go yet and there is disagreement among commission members.
9. Some expressed concerns about talking about new programs, when we barely have enough to fund our current program. Will new programs need to show that they have estimated their costs realistically? If we know we need a program all over town, but can get it funded by being geographically specific, is that what we are supposed to apply for?
10. Some ask how we should know if we should waste our precious little resources writing a proposal that has very little chance of being funded. They request that they don’t put something out that has little chance of getting funded. There was also concern about working with staff to figure out where things fit and then finding out the Commission has a different idea.
11. What is the end result of this meeting? What is the purpose, will the thoughts from today be relayed to the council? There is a request to see the comments that are given to the commission and it will be on line.
12. What is the question on the table? Prioirties and where the money is divided up by category and within the category and how funding decisions will be made in the future. Its all on the table, bring it up early and often.
13. How do we interact with this process when we’re just scambling, but we don’t know why we are doing it? What is the vision? How are we supposed to know how to partner with the city?
14. Should we write a grant for what we need, or the money available? They may write an application question to do this. We have been writing for what we can get, not what we need. Also struggle with real cost of the program. Usually it comes off the back of the staff, we should put it in, it just means we can’t pay our staff.
15. In the past decisions have been made based on who the other funders of the program are and if they exist? What are you looking for in this area? Are we scored on how much we fundraise?
16. How can we depoliticize the process? The questions was asked based on looking at who was and who was not in the room. Some who get funded based on political connections were not here – I also noted, there were no seniors groups represented. Clingan says that he wants a tight process that explains what the process is and what the game is and how to play it.
17. Will they be dealing with the living wage and wage compression?
18. Did they look at other cities, other models out there? That is where they started.
19. What CDBG dollars are being moved to this process? They said the workforce development and neighborhood center funding, but there may be others and they still have to check.
20. What private conversations have you had with others in the community that might be impacted?
21. We’ve only had two weeks with this imformation. We can’t mobilize people who are impacted to participate in the process given the timetable. There is concerns that culturally specific programs are lower prioritiy and they haven’t had a chance to hear from those impacted.
22. Requests to have the process made clear, what is most effective and where do we give input?
23. Is this tweaking or major changes. Should look less at staff and more to the committee? They say if we communitcate by email that can be shared with the committee.
24. How will they decide what areas of the city will be given priority? They still have to decide.
25. Why separate citywide vs. community specific services?
26. There were specific questions about what would be covered under access to basic services. The explanation was that these were the point of first contact services – the place populations go to get access to the deeper end program – connect with it because of neighborhood or cultural focus – that is where you go . . . this is not a 211 services.
27. Are employment services inclusive of self employment? They say if it was a group trained they might be interested.
28. How specific does a population have to be in order to be a targeted group? Examples were girls, tenants or low income people.
29. Do they look at how the money is spent in terms of looking at the salaries of administrators and how much volunteer work is used?
30. After we’re all done with this, how do we not end up in the same rut, with the same agencies continuing to get served? What is the process that makes it easier to fund new programs and serve emerging needs?
My understanding of the next steps in this process are as follows:
– October 21 – Early Childhood and Seniors meet to discuss priorities
– October 22 – Funding Process subcommittee – this is when staff will reveal how they intend to distribute the money among the categories
– October 28 – Community Services Committee meeting to discuss priorities (finalize draft?)
– November 16th – Public Hearing on the priorities
– November 18th – Public Hearing and decision on the priorities
It was clear that the committee relies heavily on staff, but if we want them to make changes, we need to be talking with them, not staff. And the sooner the better.
