First of all, 7:30 am is a shitty time for a meeting for work, especially when I also have a 7pm meeting for work. Sigh . . . so that means I’m cranky, particularly since they both have to do with (mostly lack of) funding for much needed programs in the community. Second of all, I hate meetings that weren’t on the schedule on Monday morning and where there are no handouts attached to the agenda. So, you have to a) figure out there is a meeting, b) where it is, and c) show up if you want to know what they are talking about and quickly figure out what it all means and if you can, if you want to testify. I still can’t testify, but I can’t wait until I can . . . April can’t come quick enough! This one year moratorium sucks. (Did I mention I’m cranky this morning?)
So, I missed the first few minutes, there were about 13 or 14 Executive Directors and lead program staff sitting there waiting with baited breath to find out what the staff was proposing for funding for 2011. A hour in, they were still taking testimony where people brought up more issues and concerns about the priority language and the surround issues we started talking about last week and I started wondering, how much the salaries of all these folks were adding up to (not to mention the salaries of the 40 – 50 non-profit staff who attended this meeting last week) and how much money we could save without going through all these ridiculous maneuvers to figure out how to make up for the fact that there just isn’t enough money no matter how we twist ourselves around.
The testimony was more of what we heard at the first meeting, with more specifics from some agencies about how particular programs might fit and might not fit and the words that they thought should be changed. I’ve probably been listening too long, but I didn’t hear too much new or that wasn’t obvious to me, but I liked this observation. When we talk about measuring success, we need to think about being in a life raft. If water starts crashing in and you start bailing it out and all you do is keep the water at the same level and keep afloat, you are being successful. And even if you are losing ground, and the water continues to increase, but you keep yourself afloat long enough for the storm to die down, you’ve also been successful. (My apologies to Paul Terranova from Lussier Community and Education Center who said that more eloquently.) But . . . it made alot of sense to me, especially as I’m feeling stressed about what is going on in my office today and all these meetings I have to go to that take me away from my work that needs to get done – I feel like I’m in that raft at the moment and I think it makes for a good job description for an Executive Director of a non-profit in these times.
VanRooy says that they need to get this done today if possible and they have gotten alot of feedback. Seems like a ridiculous task to me given that they have gotten so much feedback.
CHILDREN AND FAMILIES
Brown goes over the changes that the Early Childhood Committee made. They changed the requirement that they only fund “full-time” programs to say that they have an emphasis on full-time programs. They also recommended that the priorities be changed from high/intermediate/low priorities to priorities that are numbered, because it takes out the value language. VanRooy doesn’t get it, but they explain that none of these are low priorities, they just didn’t rank highest. They also recommend that they assign a dollar value to each of the priority areas.
They discuss a motion to change from numbered priorities in all the categories. There is concern that numbers could go on and have too many priorities. Others think that this was a way to fund everything to some degree because each of the areas rely on the others to exist and they didn’t want to not fund one of the priorities because it was lowest. They want to value all the priorities. VanRooy gets all adamant and says that is what they are supposed to do – they have to prioritize these. Clearly, they are talking past each other. After being on the Early Chilhood Care and Education Board I understand the problem – which is what I said before is – everything is critical at this point, everything has been cut that can be cut and the needs are just too high. VanRooy says there are no priorities, Brown says that priorities are made by determining how much money you put in each category. It’s a tie, the motion fails and they note that it will come up at the full commission again.
Van Rooy notes they have 10 minutes and they have to move along. They defer the recommendation to assign money to each of the priority areas to when they talk about the money.
Brown makes the motion to accept the “emphasis on full-time programming” and striking “full time” from A1. It passes 3 – 1.
They approve the Children and Families area as modified.
8 minutes to cover 6 areas and VanRooy tried to move them forward.
WORKFORCE PREPAREDNESS AND EMPLOYMENT
They adopt the Workforce Preparedness and Employment category without change or discussion.
SENIORS
They adopt the senior area and revert back to B1 and B2 before they were merged. They tried to make a B1 and B1 criteria. Staff explains that the reasons they are B1 and B1 because when they make cuts, it comes equally from those two areas.
Motion passes.
YOUTH
Proposal to change A2 to include programs that compliment in-school learning and development so high school youth is still prioritized as A2. She wants to include life skills. Middle school should be a priority but she wants academic piece to be included in A2. They request youth staff can come up with the language. Clingan says it is up to the commission to come up with the language at this point. They suggest they use A1 language and specifically add high school. Make that A2 and make current A2 an A3. They kept middle school a higher priority, but didn’t want to exclude high school.
Motion passes.
They discuss that their time is out and they need to approve this and some want to just have another meeting. They try to finish the youth area.
Sweet moves that they change B3 to become B1, B1 become B2 and B2 become B3. Brown seconds. Sweet says that he thinks culturally and gender specific programs are important. He thinks courts and at risk youth are also important but all in the B area.
[An aside by me: If they do that in the area of basic services, that means the Tenant Resource Center could hire a bilingual staff, but have no program to surround them because the funds to help tenants in general would likely go away and there would be no volunteers and pamphlets and website and infrastructure to help them do their job. They’d have to do all the work, which they can’t. So, we’d have bilingual staff, but not much more. That doesn’t make sense.]
Motion passes 3 – 1.
They move to adopt the youth area as changed. Passes.
They are out of time, they decide to set another meeting. They decide they need to do this without rushing it. Table it til the next meeting. They note that they have alot of directors here but Sweet says don’t share the numbers yet. They say they need to discuss the process and strategies before putting out the numbers. [Ok, that does make sense and is probably the responsible thing to do, but its irritating.]
Clingan says that full committee meets next Wednesday. They would like to get the priorities done before Wednesday. They decide to meet 7:30 Monday morning . . . can you imagine how cranky I will be then?
They apologize to us for not getting to the money part . . .
If you’re wondering how we got here, here’s the links to previous meetings:
– Minutes from October 1 for the Funding Subcommittee
– Minutes from September 3 for the Funding Subcommittee
– Minutes for July 30 for the Funding Subcommittee
– July 2, June 18, May 7, April 23 Minutes of the funding committee not available on line
The one (only) discussion the full commission had are not yet available on line, the last minutes were from July.
