On or before Monday . . . email now, show up on Monday. There is not enough money to cover all the amendments that were supported at Health and Human Needs last night and last week, so in order for housing and homeless amendments to be supported, we need your voices to make them a priority. Still no amendment to help the Tenant Resource Center serve tenants outside the City of Madison but in Dane County . . . seriously.
The Health and Human Needs Committee completed their budget recommendations last night. The blow by blow is here. (It’s on Facebook, you need to expand the comments, each “comment” later in the thread is a separate amendment and the “reply” is the what people say, amendments and final votes. WARNING: you’ll have to suffer through some bad typing)
Amendments of interest for people interested in supporting housing and homelessness issues:
From the first night:
HHN 5 – Supporting the Ombudsman Position – as many of you know, the ombudsman – otherwise formerly known as Andy Heidt – was very helpful in many issues with navigating county glitches, including housing. This wouldn’t be my highest of high priorities, but it made the list because from time to time, he was extremely helpful on housing issues. Seems as tho this position just got absorbed into many other positions and it essentially disappeared, so we’re back to having no idea who to call when things go wrong in weird and twisted ways.
The County Executive eliminated the vacant Human Services ombudsman position in his budget proposal. This amendment reverses the County Executive’s action to restore the 1.0 FTE at $93,475.
VOTE: Health and Human Needs, Failed 1 (Wegleitner)-5 (Levin, Ferrell, Clausius, Zweifel, Veldran)-1 (Dye) YGP 1-0
From the second night:
HHN-O-4 – Additional $30,000 for Bethel Lutheran Church to run a day center until next “October” when the day center is once again scheduled to re-open. This money would remain in the base budget for 2017 to help with funding the comprehensive, permanent day center.
HHN-O-4 – $30,000
Supv. Weigleitner
Increase day resource center operations line by $30,000An increase to the budget is needed to ensure highly trained professional staffing and a successful operations plan.
Increase day resource center operations line by $30,000 for a total of $130,000. The original $300,000 annual commitment, $100,000 each from the County, the City and the United Way, was based on a very slim budget proposed by SHINE 608 in 2013. Bethel Lutheran Church has also requested additional funding in order to maintain day services downtown until the comprehensive day resource center is open in October of 2016. This funding shall be used to increase the line for Bethel from $80,000 to $110,000 in 2016 and then be redirected to the operations for the permanent day resource center in 2017. An increase to the budget is needed to maintain interim day services at Bethel Lutheran Church and ensure there is sufficient funding in the base of the 2017 Budget for highly trained professional staffing and a successful operations plan for the comprehensive day resource center.
Motion tied, so it failed 3 – 3. Heidi Wegeleitner, Jenni Dye and Ronn Ferrell voting for the funding. Jeremy Levin, Matt Veldran and Bill Clausius voting against. Nick Zweifel absent.
HHN-O-6b – $0 = Using part of the millions of dollars returned by Human Services every year to fund 2017 homeless shelter needs. Every year the Human Services Department returned millions of dollars – and the money just goes back into the general fund, and is usually used to pay for Sheriff Department Overtime and other needs. Meanwhile, services are cut, nonprofits don’t get cost of living increases and needs go unmet. This amendment is to take a tiny portion of those funds and use them for, you know, human services, as they were intended to be used.
Neither revenues nor expenditures be changed and the following provision be added to 2015 RES ‐ DANE COUNTY OPERATING BUDGET APPROPRIATIONS RESOLUTION:
“At the end of fiscal year 2016, any surplus of deficit of general purpose revenue in the Human Services Fund, net of any deficit or surplus in the Badger Prairie Fund, and not to exceed $300,000, shall be retained in the Human Services Fund and provided to County shelter providers to increase shelter access for persons currently turned away from shelter, including families, single women, and men banned from shelter. The Salvation Army has requested approximately $262,000 to add shelter overflow for families and single women in 2016. Other persons don’t access shelter because of permanent bans from shelter and the lack of medical respite and a wet shelter.”Normally, the Human Services and Badger Prairie funds have a sum sufficient appropriation. Any surplus or deficits are closed to the County’s General Fund. This provision would change that practice for fiscal year 2016.
Motion failed 2 – 4. Wegleitner and Dye aye. Levin, Veldran, Clausius and Ferrell no.
HHN 7 – Add Housing Development Specialist position to work on affordable housing projects funded by the affordable housing fund, aligning other funds with housing priorities and work with municipalities to build projects outside the City of Madison.
Increase expenses $93,700 to fund 1.0 FTE Dane County Housing Development Specialist Position effective 1/1/2016.
Adds 1.0 FTE Dane County Housing Development Specialist Position.
In 2015, Dane County created an Affordable Housing Development Fund to address its significant affordable housing gap, but did not add any staff capacity for fund administration. The housing development specialist would be responsible for managing administration of Dane County’s Affordable Housing Development Fund, aligning other funding sources, collaborating with funding partners and private developers to support complex affordable housing financing packages necessary to move affordable housing initiatives forward. Current housing programs and activities are scattered throughout county government departments and quasigovernment agencies like the Dane County Housing Authority. Dane County Human Services EAWS division funds homeless services programs and other stabilizing community based services, eviction prevention, some rapid rehousing programs and other housing programs are funded in other DHS divisions. The HUD Community Development Block Grant and HOME Programs, which also fund affordable housing initiatives, is administered by the Office of Economic and Workforce Development, in the County Executive’s Office. Dane County Department of Planning and Development has worked on the Housing Needs Assessment, the Dane County Housing Summit, and Comprehensive Plan revisions related to housing. A Housing Development Specialist is necessary to oversee the administration of the annual affordable housing development fund budget allocation and coordinate our housing efforts across all departments.
Motion failed 2 – 4. Wegleitner and Dye aye. Levin, Veldran, Clausius and Ferrell no.
HHN 16 – Funding for overflow shelter for women and families so they don’t get turned away. This amendment got split into two. One for staff for family overflow at 1st United Methodist Church and one for staff for single women who get turned away if there are more than 30 women and its above 20 degrees.
HHN-O-16 – $125,000
Supv. WeigleitnerIncrease Homeless Shelter funding by $125,000 for The Salvation Army to manage a new family overflow shelter at First United Methodist Church, and add beds for single women.
With this additional funding they would stop turning people away due to lack of capacity and serve all families and women seeking their shelter.
Increase operating expenditures by $125,000 to increase funding to The Salvation Army so they can hire additional staff necessary to manage a new family overflow shelter at First United Methodist Church and add beds for single women. With this additional funding they would stop turning people away due to lack of capacity and serve all families and women seeking their shelter.
The motion was split into two motions, now HHN16a (families) and HHN 16b (single women).
Both motions passed unanimously.
HHN 17 – Increase the Cost of Living Increase for non-profits. This got a little crazy, at one point the .3% COLA increase was recommended to be 3%!!! A $2 – 3M amendment.
HHN-O-17 – $307,295
Supervisor DyeAdd an additional .3% POS contract COLA to various contract line items to bring the total COLA adjustment to .8% when added to the Executive’s .5% COLA adjustment DETAILED LINE ITEM LIST TO FOLLOW
The total COLA adjustment to eligible Purchse of Service will increase to .8% with this additional .3% adjustment.
The lack of any COLA increase in recent years for contracted service providers has been consistently identified as a major concern in sustaining levels of service.
Passes unanimously . . . since it seems like pennies after the millions of dollars amendment. Increasing .5% seemed easy.
Capital Budget Amendment
Adding $2M to the affordable housing fund. This makes it $3.25M for the year. That passed, I think there was one no vote, but the original amendment was to add money to make it $5M. Concerns about repaying the debt by Jeremy Levin prevented that from happening.
AND THEN THERE IS TRC
So far, there is no one committed to doing an amendment to have Tenant Resource Center do housing counseling about rights and responsibilities, or mediations or security deposit loan funds, or housing crisis funds or presentations or any services for any tenants outside the City of Madison. We are asking for $50,000 to continue to provide these services. If this doesn’t happen, we will serve the entire state of Wisconsin except Dane County outside the City of Madison, forming a donut where the only people who are denied services will be those from the Town of Madison, Fitchburg, Sun Prarie, Middleton, Stoughton, etc. We have a few “maybe’s” and a couple “if I have to” but no one willing to take this on, so we need your help . . . and we need to get someone to commit to this before Friday at 10am. They will be taking up HHN amendments at Personnel and Finance on Monday and I believe (tho I’m not entirely certain) that the amendment has to be in the packet and ready by 10am on Friday.
EMAIL PERSONNEL AND FINANCE COMMITTEE
Please email members of Personnel and Finance and let them know that you think renters in Dane County (40% of the population) should not be deprived of TRC services. And support any of the above amendments that you feel are important. Remember they have $500,000 before they hit the levy limit and the HHN amendments along were $650,000 so they will still need to cut some of the funding being recommended.
Members of the Personnel and Finance committee are as follows:
erickson.chuck@countyofdane.com
solberg.cynda@countyofdane.com
oloughlin@countyofdane.com
gillis.george@countyofdane.com
pertl.jeff@countyofdane.com
hendrick@countyofdane.com
kolar.mary@countyofdane.com
corrigan@countyofdane.com
stubbs@countyofdane.com
(Full names are Dennis O’Loughlin, John Hendrick, Sharon Corrigan and Sheila Stubbs)
Make sure to tell them your address so they know you are from Dane County.
ATTEND THE MEETING AND TESTIFY OR REGISTER SUPPORT
Monday, 11/2/15
5:30
City-County Building Room 351 **BUDGET**
(no agenda available yet)
