So, the Mayor is trying to remove the political influence on the funding of non-profits by taking them out of the budget process and letting the Community Services Commission make the decision after the budget process. There’s just a few problems with that . . .
Here’s just a few.
1. This year, that would leave the Commission, and the Early Childhood Care and Education Board and the Senior Advisory Committee 13 days to make those decisions in order to get the information to the Council for the December meeting.
2. The Mayor said that we could wait until the January meeting, but that forces the committees and non-profits to work through the holidays during the end of the year wrap up with extra accounting and reporting duties.
3. No matter how we do it, it will likely delay the contracts for the non-profits. The Mayor seemed to think that it would be ok for the non-profits to get their contracts after the contract period starts.
4. No one has actually contacted the non-profits to let them know about all these changes, so all they know is a vague paragraph sent out last Friday and whatever they might have read in the paper.
The best part is, they promised to contact the non-profits to let them know about the meeting TONIGHT at the new Goodman Atwood Neighborhood Center at 5:15.
The other problem is that everything is a moving target. Since that letter went out last Friday, we were informed that things have changed again and at least for the Office of Community Services, the COLA increases for the agencies were going to be put back in the budget. No mention of what would have with the CDBG agencies.
