Community Development Block Grant (cdbg) Commission - Regular Meeting

It is now 05:00, so I'll call the meeting to order on this April 14. It is 05:00. And this is the Dane County Community Development Block Grant Commission meeting, so if you're in the wrong room. First order of business is our call to order. So can we do roll call, please?

I I can do that, Barrett, unless you want to.

Sure. I can. Chair, Taylor Brown. Here. Jeremiah DeGallo? Here. Michael Engelberger? Here. Jeffrey Glaser? Here. Ron Johnson. Here. Kathy Camp.

Here.

Martin Lackey. Here. Chris Billy and Timo. Here. Donald Dantzler. Matt here. Lauren Gage. Matt here. Ted Gunderson. Here. Anthony Dare.

Here.

And Tim Croft. Present.

Right. And we have quorum. Thank you so much. Now we'll move on to the first order of business, consideration of our minutes. Do I have the first?

Make a motion to approve the minutes.

Alright. Do we have a first, commissioner? From Commissioner Engelberger. Excuse me. All in favor? Aye. Aye. And motion carries. Next, we will move on to our reports to committee. So I will move it over to Cindy, who's joining us online.

Hi, everybody. I have some updates regarding the CDBG and HOME program. One of the updates is that we received our notice of award for both our CDBG and HOME federal grants. And I'm happy to say that both of those grants and this is for 2026. Both of those grants have increased from 2025.

So our CDBG grant for 2026 is $1,162,167, and our home grant for 2026 is $589,677.59. So as I mentioned, these are both an increase from 2025, which puts us just about a $100,000 more than what we received in 2025. So we did do the 2026 allocations already, so we'll have to take a look at those contingencies for the increases and move accordingly. So we'll give an update on that. The second item to report on is that we scheduled our RFP workshops that we schedule each year prior to the release of the RFPs.

So this workshop is for the 2027 RFPs that we'll release, in the next month. And those workshops are being held both in person and virtually. The first one will be held in person, next Thursday, April 23 at 09:30AM at the job center. And then Friday, April 24 at 09:00AM will be a virtual meeting. You all should have received an an email inviting you to attend these.

It's not, you know, mandatory, but if you're interested, please join us. Another reminder on the RFP workshops will probably go out this week, so take a look at that. And these workshops are open to anyone in the public who may have an interest in applying for the RFPs for 2027 funding. We'll go over the structure of the RFPs and what to expect based on the evaluation criteria, and we'll review that tonight. But it's sort of a way for us to give information to the public prior to the release of the RFPs. So any questions on those two items?

No questions here.

Great.

Alright. Next, we'll move on to our action items, to Joanna, who's going to talk about our 2027 CDBG home RFP and application process updates.

So I hope you all were able to look at the PDF, that was an attachment to the agenda. I'm really gonna cover what's the summary of updates. There's a couple of bullet point items on there. Thank you, Cindy, for sharing. And so I'll go through them real quick, and then I'll after those just to see what questions do arise.

Looking at how staff came up with the summary of updates and recommend changes, this has been an ongoing process with dialogue with both previous application review team members' feedback. For those that sat on it, And then you guys did provide feedback. Commission members who also voiced interest in changing things up and then also hearing from, like, our applicants. Right? They also provided feedback on ways to improve.

And so we go through this process every year given the number of updates that were happening and some of the changes that are being recommended. We are proposing this to you all as, like, commissions so that you guys can evaluate and take a look closer look at what we are. So the first bullet point is each RFP project area will have a maximum amount available for that category. And so what we look at if if you can scroll down just a little bit for me, Cindy, to that second page, what we're talking about there, it's looking at project areas, that first column to the left hand side. We are anticipating that each area is gonna have an estimated maximum funding amount that all applicants in that project area would be competing for.

In order for us to meet our percentages as identified in that five year con plan, 2027 is gonna have to be the year that we right size our percentages to make our goals happen. If we don't do it now, there's a good chance we might not be able to hit those targets in the next two years, and so it's extremely important that we pay particular attention this year, at those percentages so that we can try to get as close as we can to that five year comp plan goal. So when we talk about that each area is gonna have a maximum amount available, that's that second column that you're seeing there. The second bullet point, says that each RFP project area will indicate a maximum amount that an agency can apply for. So the example that we're giving is, like, in public services.

The maximum amount that an application can apply for is $35,000. What we looked as data in the last couple of cycles, what was, like, the highest amounts and the average of what we had awarded, $35,000 was right in line with what was given before. Applications are gonna be evaluated and ranked with other applications in that same RFP. So if you guys recall that, what Cindy was displaying, a $156,000, only those in that project area are gonna be ranked amongst each other and then voted on based on based on scores. Highest ranking applications in each RFP project area are gonna receive their full allowable request.

So, let's use, public service as an If the maximum is 35 and they apply for 35 and they ranked one, they're gonna get $35,000. They're not gonna get a dollar less than that. We're gonna follow that sequence until pretty much funds run out. So we're gonna, we're gonna keep going in the order, of what they had applied for, and that's where we get to the bullet point that if remaining available funds are below the subsequent ranked applications, Everything that's not public services, the no grant funding is gonna be recommended for those for those applications. In the public services arena, we are going to we're not gonna have a minimum request.

That was, like, a big thing that was kinda pointed out last year is not having a minimum request because we have the $35,000. In in public services, we staff will contact the agency. That's the next lowest ranking application to see, can they still make it work? So let's say their, let's say their request was $35,000, and we just happen to have $34,000 less. Rather than losing that 34,000, staff will talk to that purse to that agency to say, hey.

Can you still make it work with 34? The number could be 20,000. It could be 5,000. We don't know where it's gonna fall out because it all it's gonna vary based on who's applying, but those are sort of the process that we're gonna be following. And then going back to that first bullet point, you know, when fall when funds fall below full request, the next highest ranking applicants will receive the full consideration at their minimum allowable request or higher.

So and that's gonna be on everything else except public services. We're not gonna have applicant interviews, and that's a huge change, I'd say, in the last ten years here. This would be the very first year that we don't have applicant interviews. Our question might be, well, why are we not having applicant interviews? Just the process has changed a lot with Dan County and what we are and not allowed to ask in an interview.

And so to make the process as equitable as we can across the board for this year, we're taking a pause in interviews to see how it goes. And we can reevaluate. You know, if that didn't work out and we think that interviews are critically needed, then I think that's a discussion that we have with procurement team to determine, like, okay. What is the approach that we can take to have that in a subsequent RFP? But for 2027, we're saying no applicant interviews.

And then the last two bullet points are new. Those are these are new, items that we're proposing. And so I'm gonna take a quick pause before I go into detail what this is. The reason that we wanna put these into place is that we are noticing that there are agencies with high balances of multiyear contracts and not adequate spending in a timely manner. It's becoming a bit of an issue when it comes to timeliness.

So timeliness is that we can only have one and a half times of our CDBG allocation in our account in any given time. We have agencies that have one agency in particular has over half $1,000,000 in contracts, in funding that is not going out to the community fast enough, and we need to change that behavior. We need to change, I will tell you this is not our first first attempt in trying to get agents has changed that. We've had direct one on one conversations. We've had extensions to contracts.

Look. We've done what we could to this point. We now need it. We need your support to kinda help us share that message that we need adequate spending in contracts. So it goes to that first bullet point.

What are the reasons that they haven't used money?

Without naming the one particular agency, they have quoted market conditions as reason for not spending. Staff Dane County staff have identified that it's more of their process and how they process things, and they haven't been willing to change their process. And so we're sort of at a crossroads there because we can we're not in we're not hand in hand in that project. So we're gonna see from the big picture, and we're gonna say, hey. This is a a sticking point.

Consider changing this. This has been a conversation that we've been having with this agency since I started in 2021. So it's been an ongoing issue for now five years, and it's has been compounding for quite some time.

Sounds to me like the money could go elsewhere.

And so that's what we're hoping could that's what we're hoping through these two bullet points that it, again, signals that if you have so the first one goes back to an applicant with more than a thousand dollars in unexpended funds in a single project area from contracts executed before 2025. So we're saying if you had contracts before 2025 and they have more than $1,000 as of July 1, they're not gonna be eligible to apply for additional funds in that project area. The second bullet point then says an applicant with more than $250,000 in unexpended funds in a single project area as of 07/01/2026 is not eligible to apply for additional funds in that project area. There are a handful of agencies that, as of today, like, would be in that ballpark. We'd anticipate based on projections and just, like, past history working with certain agencies, we have a strong indication that they they can meet this this threshold before that July 1.

One agency in particular that we're not sure if they would or would not. It all depends on what happens in the next few months for them. So And then, Joanne

oh, go ahead, Ronald.

Oh, no. What questions do you have?

Joanne, do do those limitations take into account multiyear contracts?

It would be from multiyear contracts. The one thing that we're the one thing that we're considering not taking into account right now would be, like, for example, if for 2026 funding, if they don't have a fully executed contract, right, like, they haven't signed it, we haven't signed it, They really can't be penalized for that because there's no contract to draw down from. We're making exceptions to situations like that, but multiyear contracts that were signed in '24. Thunderstorm warning. Okay. We're good. No tornadoes yet. Sorry. We just got a an alarm. But it's thunderstorm warning, not tornado.

So we're good. Going back to your question, it was I'm sorry, Ron. I I I blanked out real quick.

I was wondering about multiyear contracts.

Oh, yes. Multiyear contracts. So, yeah, so if they have a a contract that can sign in 2024, yes, we are definitely taking that into that into account. In

the event that they submit receipts, go down below a threshold, do they have the opportunity then, or is it the date is the date kinda locking them into you're no longer going to be able to hit this cycle?

So if they can get us an invoice, like, June 30, by our definition, they have spent down those funds because we would pay for it. Go. Alright. We gotta go. Bye.

I don't know.

Bye bye. Sorry.