Community Development Block Grant (cdbg) Commission - Regular Meeting

All right. Thank you everybody for joining. It is Tuesday, June 2nd. And this is the Dane County Community Development Block Grant Commission meeting. We have everybody in person and nobody online. So we're going to go ahead and move past. Excuse me. Commissioner Dantzler. Oh, Commissioner Dantzler. Excuse me. Is joining online. Yep. I'm here. Hey, folks.

Hi.

Okay. All right. So we'll go ahead and pass over our roll call as we have everybody and have quorum. Consideration of minutes. Do we have any discussion or comments on the consideration of minutes from April 21st and April 14th? Motion to approve both. Do we have a motion? Do I hear a second? Any discussion? Not hearing any. All in favor? Aye.

Motion carries.

First order of business here is our ethics training for tonight. So we do have a 20-minute video that we are going to be playing. So I'll turn it over to Cindy.

So I'll just give a preface to this. The county board recently passed amendments to chapters 6 and 15 of the Dane County Code of Ordinances to require an ethics training for all county board's committees and commissions. And they asked that we show this 20 minute video at one of our meetings before July 1st. So we will do that tonight.

Thank you.

The issue of ethics is always, unfortunately, never black and white. And it's going to require a lot of discussion either internally with yourself, if it's something that you wanna take on yourself, or if you have questions about what may be an ethical issue, reach out to me or someone else in my office. These questions, you can tie yourself up in knots about them, but there's a kind of a quick test that I will show you at the end that should kind of help you guys kind of go through them as we proceed. But let's just go ahead and get started. So ethics, again, the purpose essentially has always been to prevent undue influence, self-dealing, and disappearance of impropriety. It's also to help the public, the constituents believe that they, to have some confidence in what we're doing here, right? That the decisions are being made based upon what they want, what they have asked for you to sort of look out for, rather than for something more provincial in your own interests. The ethics ordinances that we have come from state law, and then we've also added additional ordinances ourselves. They're straightforward, but again, modern day experiences really change how they apply to your specific case, ALL COMING FROM DIFFERENT BACKGROUNDS, DIFFERENT EMPLOYERS, DIFFERENT CONNECTIONS IN THE COMMUNITY. YOU KNOW, MADISON AND THE DANE COUNTY AREA IS NOT VERY LARGE, SO THERE'S GOING TO BE A LOT OF KIND OF CROSSOVER EFFECT BETWEEN YOUR ROLE HERE AND YOUR PERSONAL ROLES AT HOME. ALL RIGHT. SO ETHICS RULES APPLY TO ALL COUNTY OFFICIALS, THAT INCLUDES YOU AS ELECTED SUPERVISORS, AS WELL AS COUNTY EMPLOYEES. WE'RE ONLY GOING TO TALK ABOUT THOSE RULES THAT APPLY TO YOU TONIGHT. So what? In general, they seek to prevent the county officials from using your office or position to gain, for any personal gain. They try to prevent you to ignore, they want to prevent you from ignoring any conflicts of interest, and they don't, and they want to prevent you from being inappropriate employees. All right, so Wisconsin Statute 1959 is the code of ethics for local government officials. These apply to everyone statewide if you're in a municipality. AND THE NUMBER ONE THAT FALLS UNDERNEATH IS THAT YOU CANNOT USE YOUR OFFICE FOR PRIVATE GAIN, RIGHT? THE LANGUAGE HERE SPECIFICALLY SAYS YOU CAN'T USE YOUR OFFICE FOR PERSONAL FINANCIAL GAIN OR FOR ANYTHING OF VALUE, QUOTE, UNQUOTE, OR FOR GAIN OF YOUR FAMILY MEMBER OR FOR AN ASSOCIATED ORGANIZATION. THAT'S STATE LAW. YOU CANNOT OFFER OR RECEIVE ANYTHING OF VALUE, WHICH MEANS YOU CAN'T SOLICIT OR ACCEPT FROM ANY PERSON ANYTHING OF VALUE IF IT COULD REASONABLY BE EXPECTED TO INFLUENCE A VOTE OR AN ACTION. Our ordinances has gone so far to define what it means to be anything of value and essentially breaks down to something anything at all that has a value of $13 and above or $39 yearly so that's bar is extremely low right, and so this goes back to kind of we talked about originally actually surprised I kind of brought up this idea of. Disclosures right at this idea of it's better safe than sorry to make sure that you know if you do feel like there's something of value out there that you just recognize that, as such, you take the action that's required. You also cannot take action on a matter which you have a financial interest. Right, so you can't take you can't vote or take any official action if you are your immediate family member and affiliate organization has a substantial financial interest in the matter. WE DEFINE SUBSTANTIAL FINANCIAL INTEREST AS ANYTHING THAT YOU HAVE TO DISCLOSE IN YOUR DISCLOSURE FORMS WHEN YOU HAVE FILED THE COUNTY CLERK'S OFFICE. YOU CANNOT USE YOUR OFFICE TO CREATE A SUBSTANTIAL BENEFIT FOR YOURSELF OR YOUR IMMEDIATE FAMILY OR AN ORGANIZATION YOU'RE ASSOCIATED WITH. IMMEDIATE FAMILY MEANS A SPOUSE OR DOMESTIC PARTNER OR ANY RELATIVE RECEIVES HALF MORE OF YOUR FINANCIAL SUPPORT FROM THE OFFICER THAT'S IN QUESTION PROVIDES HALF OR MORE SUPPORT. And then associated with an organization is actually somewhat limited. It just means you, it implies to you or your immediate family that serves as a director, trustee, or controls at least 10% of a business's equity, or if you serve as an authorized representative. So that's one of those rare situations where your membership in an organization isn't necessarily going to be triggered as something as you have you being associated with under the statute, as long as you're not a board member, a director, or someone that's authorized representative. You cannot take action on a matter which you have a financial interest. So if you're faced with this, you must not, A, participate in any discussion, deliberation, or vote, and you have to ask to be recorded as abstaining. What often gets missed when there is, when an elected official realizes there is a conflict, they believe that, well, I'm going to go ahead and abstain. But before they do so, they're jumping in and talking about the matter, you know, and putting their two cents in. And that's not really what the statute contemplates. The statute requires and contemplates someone making a decision okay, I have a conflict here. I need to sort of step back and not get involved. But you have to do that from the beginning. You can't just assume that your abstention is in and of itself sufficient to avoid any potential ethical conflict. We're gonna shift to now our Dane County Chapter 9. It's Local Ethics Code. It incorporates what we just talked about under statute. But it also adds a few other things. We've added a few years ago a requirement under Ethics Code to prohibit elected officials from engaging in sexual harassment or discrimination on a various basis. Interesting quirk that many organizations have is that those sexual harassment policies or that those policies that prohibit sexual harassment, the laws that prohibit kind of discrimination, the organizations tend to focus the application of those, the implementation of those on employees and often forget that elected officials don't really have a direct connection to it. So in order to remedy that a few years ago, we actually added that as part of the ethics code for county officials. You cannot use or disclose information that you gained in the course of your service. unless it's already in the public record, if it's gonna somehow result in you gaining something of value. Again, more than $13. You cannot use your office for influence or gain, you know, this is very common through a lot of this goes throughout the country that's kind of sometimes called it don't you know who I am rule you know that someone's going out there saying, you know, I think you're going to want to do this for me because I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm a very important supervisor on the county board. So, and that's unlikely perhaps, but it is something that a lot of jurisdictions have adopted. You cannot use, this is sometimes comes up, you cannot use any county property for either partisan or nonpartisan political activity unless that property is available to anyone else in the public. There is not a specific list of property that we have in our ordinances, but it is, there is a list of property we have in our ordinances, but it's not inclusive. Sometimes what comes up is, you know, the use of email, like counties provided email for partisan or nonpartisan activity. that tends to be an issue sometimes, and that should be avoided, because that would be considered a county resource. Anything that you can access because of your role as a supervisor is a county resource. Section 928 deals with a kind of specialized situation with supervisors who happen to represent private interests before a county entity. If anyone falls in that camp, please reach out to me individually. I can sort of guide you through it. kind of acknowledge that that might be a possibility and there's certain exceptions that where we could sort of investigate to see whether or not you can take advantage of to still sort of meet your private responsibilities, but also not run afoul of the ethics code. This is sometimes called as log rolling, you cannot trade your vote for or against an item for the vote of another supervisor on a different item. Or for a modification to an ordinance amendment or resolution, or in exchange for a veto or non veto of an item by the county executive. Similarly, you cannot accept anything of value like fees or expenses for an activity, unless you can demonstrate the activity is not related to the use of counting time or materials and that there's no relationship to your office. That second one is, the big exception to that one are actual and reasonable speaker fees, like honorariums. Our ordinances recognize that in many ways those kind of assist the county, those are for the county's benefit, not necessarily for your own personal benefit. There's also an exception in our ordinances to reflect that certain political committees regulated by Chapter 11 can provide such fees to you. may not accept anything of value which consists of transportation, lodging, meals, food or beverage, or reimbursement, but again, You can accept these items if you can show that it was received primarily for the benefit of the county, like I mentioned. A good example or a good sort of category of those exceptions would be if you were to receive the benefit, if it would actually prevent the county from paying the expense instead. So a good example would be if someone were to say, we want you to do a conference, we're gonna make sure your meals are paid at that conference. The county has a per diem that they would have to pay otherwise. So often our employees kind of take advantage of that so that the county itself doesn't have to pay out for the per diems. That would be permitted under the ethics code. There's also an exception here for payments from political committees, kind of similar to the one we just discussed. Now disclosures. Section 9.36 explains the requirements you must follow if you receive anything of value and how to disclose. I will tell you that the process is somewhat wonky. It requires you, if you decide, I think there's a provision there that says you decide to keep it, you need to submit the value of whatever the thing of value was to the treasurer's office and the treasurer's office then needs to keep a record of it. My editorial statement of that is it just looks bad. So really consider whether or not it's worth taking advantage of that process and talk to me or someone from my office if you are considering that. The Incarnate Ordinances 9.60 and 9.61 deals with the Statements of Economic Interest, which I think many of you have already completed. And then this last one is in red because I wasn't sure that the body was going to adopt the changes we just made. To disclosure. So we're going to go to breaking news here. Thanks to all of you and spend a little bit more time about this new ordinance that everyone has passed. I'm going to read it just kind of I don't want to bore everyone, but I think it's helpful just to sort of read it out loud and then give anyone a chance to sort of ask questions about it. I will be upfront and say this is new to us as well. Oftentimes these ethics rules, we get a good sense as to how they're going to be applied after some unfortunate first issues come up. So, but I want to sort of be able to sort of address any kind of generalized questions tonight and then sort of focus my research afterwards. If there are some questions that we should kind of look into after after we discuss them today. So, as we mentioned before, so section 1 deals just with disclosures. Right. And it's basically, in your case, as a supervisor who has or whose immediate family member has a substantial financial interest. Right. Let's take that. That one we've already discussed. Right. That's anything that you've already kind of disclosed in your economic interest. or a personal interest, we've also discussed this, that could be anything above a modicum of a contact between a business, political association, family member, or whatever. So it's really low bar. That in a manner pending before you, right, then this ordinance requires you to disclose it. And again, and I really, I can't stress this enough, I think the practice should be Better safe than sorry, right? Because even if it's not a real story, the failure to disclose might make it a story, and it's better just to disclose it if you can. I know as this gets kicked in, once this kicks in, and many of you are going to have questions about it because we haven't had to do this before, I'm happy to discuss those with you offline. And if there is some kind of general guidance that comes from those discussions, I will provide it to the board. Number two, deals with abstentions. And as we talked about before, this one requires kind of a higher bar, a higher level of inquiry for members of the body. So the county official shall abstain from discussing, deliberating, and voting on the matter under consideration if they or an immediate family member has a substantial financial interest, again, we know what that is, or a personal interest, but here's the qualifier, right? Both of those, or either of those, I should say, are need to be to the extent as judged by you as a supervisor and again if you have questions please reach out to me or someone from my office that those interests you believe conflicts or appears to conflict with your official duties or would impair or reasonably expected to impair their independence of judgment or actions Again, this is a brand new rule. I invite anyone that feels if there's something like in the agenda that's coming up for your first meeting after this one that you feel, hey, this might be something that I need to abstain on, please contact our office. Quite frankly, these discussions have been occurring for many years with me. A lot of members kind of reach out because of their employment or they just want to make sure what should I do here. So I'm happy to answer those questions moving forward. I WILL INVITE QUESTIONS AFTERWARDS, I GUESS. BUT LET'S MOVE ON. BUT PLEASE WRITE THEM DOWN IF YOU HAVE ANY. OKAY. NO PRIVATE INTEREST IN PUBLIC CONTRACTS. SO OUR ORDINANCES SAY YOU CANNOT PARTICIPATE IN THE MAKING OF A CONTRACT IN YOUR CAPACITY AS A BOARD MEMBER IF YOU HAVE A DIRECT OR INDIRECT FINANCIAL INTEREST IN THE CONTRACT. SO ESSENTIALLY, IF YOU HAVE ANY any skin in the game about a resolution that authorizes the contract, then you should abstain from voting on it. Now, the flip side of this one is a little bit more complicated. However, you cannot, in your private capacity, negotiate, bid, or enter into a contract with which you have a direct or indirect financial interest if you are authorized or required by law to participate in your public capacity in the making of the contract. So the example that comes to mind is one that was written in an AG opinion many years ago where there was a town member, I believe, who was a member of a committee that ultimately kind of would vote on recommending whether or not land should be purchased. This town member owned some land that the town was interested in purchasing. This town member negotiated with the, agency or not even agency like the member of the of the town board that was kind of in charge of kind of uh soliciting and acquiring that land then when the deal came up before the committee that he was in he abstained he thought he was fine by doing that this statute which is a criminal actual family statute does prohibits you from doing that so the way i try to think about it is is that whereas the one previously Ruben Duran- comes into place when you just happen to see a contract that you have some direct or financial interest in you can abstain and step away, because that is affecting you and your public capacity and your official capacity. Ruben Duran- What you can't do, though, is be the initiator of the negotiations or engage in those negotiations at all, and by the time, and if you do, by the time that contract comes back to you. as part of your official duties, it's too late. You've already committed the felony violation, honestly. I can tell you that this is probably a criminal statute, hasn't been used in many, many years, but it will put you at risk. So my big takeaway here is, you have something that you want to negotiate with the county, you should really think whether or not that is something you want to pursue. Because the minute you start negotiating and it ends up coming back to you, the violation might have already occurred. And again, if this ever is a possibility, please, please, please reach out to me. I am happy to go into a lot of discussion, a lot of inquiry with it about it. My office is here to sort of assist you with all of these. There are other prohibitions that are that other state laws come into play too, which is one is you cannot be employed or appointed to a new position or an office that was created during your term in office. So if It seems unlikely given our budget circuit constraints, but if we were to create positions in the 2027 budget, and you thought to yourself, I really would, I wouldn't mind doing X for the county. You would not be eligible to apply for that position and hold that position under state law. This other one is another federal, sorry, criminal statute. You cannot intentionally fail or refuse to perform a known mandatory non-secretionary duty within the required time period. cannot take any action that you know is forbidden by law to do it in an official capacity and you cannot either act or by act or by a mission to exercise discretionary power inconsistent with the duties of the office in order to obtain a dishonest advantage. That language is. kind of broad, and again, it will have to be a situation where we look at what the circumstances are, and then we kind of go over that statute together to see whether or not it applies to your specific case. But it's essentially trying to prohibit the misconduct in office, and it goes required sort of investigation to your intention as to why you took action or you didn't take action. So it's really fact intensive as well. So I imagine all of you are sitting back saying like, I've heard a lot of words being thrown at me and I still don't know what to do if something were to come up. And that is a fair, fair criticism. A few things that we kind of, I can kind of point to you to sort of guide you a little bit, at least in your initial inquiry. One is what's the nature of the decision that you're about to vote on, right? The reason why that's important is if you are going to make a decision that's a little bit more quasi-judicial, one where like you're applying a specific set of facts to whether or not you're going to take an action, that's a, A BIGGER DEAL. THAT'S A SITUATION WHERE I THINK YOU SHOULD READY REACH OUT TO OUR OFFICE SOONER THAN LATER SO WE CAN DISCUSS IT. THERE'S MORE OF A POSSIBILITY THAT'S GOING TO BE AN ETHICAL ISSUE FOR YOU. ASK YOURSELF, DOES THE MATTER INVOLVE A PUBLIC CONTRACT IN WHICH I HAVE A DIRECT OR INDIRECT FINANCIAL INTEREST? AGAIN, AIR ON THE SIDE OF BEING CAREFUL. REACH OUT TO OUR OFFICE. WE'RE HAPPY TO ANSWER THOSE QUESTIONS. THEN SIMPLY, DOES THE ACTION AFFECT MYSELF, A MEMBER OF MY FAMILY OR AN ORGANIZATION WHICH MY FAMILY MEMBER OR I ARE ASSOCIATED? Again, all of these, you know, in many cases, if any of these are yes, that I think should inspire you, unless you're confident in your decision to reach out to our office to have a discussion about it. Now, I promised you there is like one piece of practical advice that I've always told people, and it's this one. Does it pass a smell test? Would you be comfortable if you were to imagine maybe a political operative or maybe a political candidate you don't necessarily care for doing what you're contemplating doing and reading about it in the paper? If it makes you feel like, well, I'm not sure if I would like that person, or consequently, I'm not sure if I want people to know I did X, if that were to come out. That is, that's the trigger to sort of follow. That's your decision right there. That's your decision to abstain. That's your decision to avoid any further discussions about that matter. And at a minimum, that's your decision to reach out to our office. Again, key thing here is we are here to help. We can provide confidential advice for you. Otherwise, the Dane County Ethics Board can handle complaints and they can also provide an advisory opinion to you as well.

It's good.

Thank you for sitting through that. If you have any questions on how any of this applies to all of you as CDBG commissioners, please reach out. And if we don't have the answers to some of your questions, we can reach out to our Corp Council. We don't have a lot of things that particularly would come up except for some of the funding opportunities we provide. But again, if anything comes up, please let us know.

Just a quick question for the commissioners that weren't able to attend tonight. Will they be given the copy of the video?

Yeah, we this is a YouTube link. So this will be sent out to the commissioners that aren't here.

Awesome. Thank you. All right, so we'll go ahead and move on to our next action item, which is the election of our commission chairperson and vice chair. So Chair Brown is not able to be with us tonight, but we will start with the chair position. And I... Just wanted to kind of throw it out there just to see who is, if there is any interest from other commission members. Personally, I like the opportunity to have new voices participate in the chair or vice chair position. So if anybody does have interest, I've served for as vice chair for two years with chair Brown serving as president. So, or vice, chair um so i will um kind of open it up to anybody that has interest anybody online taking nominations i will go ahead and nominate chair brown uh for chairperson

I guess we would do like a second call for nominations too. Oh, that's right.

Sorry. Second call for nominations.

Third call.

Third call. Third call. Okay. Not hearing any, I will go ahead and nominate Chair Brown for chairperson. Do I hear a second?

Second. All in favor?

Aye. All right. Motion carries. Next, we'll go ahead and elect vice chair. Again, I've served in this capacity for two years. If anybody is interested, now is your first opportunity to say. Not hearing any. Second? Second. Come on, everybody, don't speak up at once.

Third.

Okay.

I would nominate Jeremiah for vice chair.

All in favor?

Aye. I think you need a second.

I did. You did?

Okay.

Second from Supervisor Engelberger. Okay. Motion carries. So looks like we have Chairperson Brown serving, and I will serve as Vice Chair. Thank you very much.

Do we know if she's okay with that?

We do. Okay.

Excellent.

But thank you for your concern. All right, so we spent a lot of time on the annual action plan. So in front of you, you should all have a copy or have received a copy of the 2026 annual action plan. So Cindy, do you have a presentation?

Sure, so I'm sharing my screen. This is the annual action plan, which is the... federal application to hud that allows us to receive cdbg and home funding so this annual action plan is due every year we submit it through our online system and it's actually due tomorrow it's the second year of our five-year consolidated plan so this is for 2026. It's a lengthy document, but worth reading. A lot of the information in there kind of carries over to or from what we've done in our consolidated plan on housing, homelessness, community services, economic development. But I think the key part here is indicating how we will allocate our 2026 federal grant funding. And I'm just scrolling down to our goals summary information. And this kind of delineates how we're spending our funding that we will get in 2026. And as a reminder, we don't yet have the 2026 funds available to us yet because I do have to submit this first in our online system, had reviews it and approves it. However, we did determine how we will allocate these funds at our meeting last fall when we had our public hearing and the funding is going to agencies that applied through our RFP process and were determined to receive the funding, the grant funds. So these agencies theoretically can start their work. However, we don't actually have the 2026 funds yet, although we do know what our federal awards will be. And as a reminder, our CDBG funds for 2026 will be $1,162,167. And then our home grant for 2026 will be $627,409.40. So what you see in front of you is a breakdown of where these funds will go based upon the goals that were determined in our consolidated plan. And it also lists our goal outcomes indicators. And so what we do is we We see what types of objectives or outcomes all of our grant recipients say they will meet during the 2026 grant year, and we plug those numbers into this chart. And so it allows us to see how many housing units, mortgage assistant, public services, businesses assisted, as a snapshot for 2026. And then at the end of the year, we'll see if we are meeting our one year goals. And then it kind of goes over into the next year on how we determine where we will allocate our funding for 2027. So this snapshot in the executive summary kind of lays out where the funding is going based upon our goals in the consolidated plan. So I'll stop there. If there are any questions on the annual action plan, we will need a motion to accept the annual action plan as submitted to you tonight so that I can enter it into our online system tomorrow, the deadline, so we can receive our federal funding from HUD this year. And if there are any changes that will be made at the request of HUD, I'll make those changes and notify everybody. But usually there aren't any changes.

All right, I don't have any change, but I have a couple questions. So you already answered the first one. Who's the audience here? And this goes to HUD, right? Correct. Okay, so what's then the difference between this report and the CAPER report?

Sure, good question. So, and I'll just kind of give a broad overview. There are three main reports that we submit to HUD. The big one is the five-year consolidated plan. So if you recall, and a lot of you were new last year, But we worked on the five-year consolidated plan or strategic plan, which was 2025 through 2029. And that was submitted last year. That is also required by HUD. It's a five-year plan, so we have to do a lot of behind-the-scenes work, a lot of community outreach to determine where we're going for five years. The annual action plan is saying what we are doing... Is that a? Sorry, I heard.

Elevator. Okay.

The annual action plan is our federal application on what we are doing for that program year. So how we are allocating the funds based upon our consolidated plan. So that's a one-year plan. The CAPER is the Consolidated Annual Performance Evaluation Report. So at the end of 2026, we'll put all of our numbers and spending together and produce a report and show everybody how we did last year or the year prior. So the annual action plan is what we're doing this year. The CAPER is how did we do. What outcomes did we achieve? What money did we spend? And that's how we kind of determine, okay, did we do as we set out to do for 2026? And we also have the opportunity to look at where are the gaps in funding, where are additional needs that we didn't quite get to in 2026 that we can do in 2027? And for those of you on the application review team, you kind of see how we issued the RFPs in a way that was very intentional about meeting some of those gaps and ensuring that we were going to meet our outcomes ultimately for the five-year plan.

Five-year plan is the fundamental document, right? The caper is kind of a scorecard looking back, and this then is kind of what we're doing for the next year to meld into the five-year. Okay, and then the other question, because it kind of ties into this, I'm still confused by the year. So like the applications we're looking at today are actually, is that year three? Because that would be money distributed in 27th?

So you might be referring to the RFPs that are active and live right now. This is for 2027 funding.

So that's your three of the five year plan? Correct. Okay.

So there was a lot of math done on the staff end to determine how much funding we would have and how we would allocate it based on these goals. A lot of projections.

So, Sydney, I have a question. So once this gets sent directly to HUD, what does the timeline look like after you hopefully send it today?

Sure, good question. So if I send it tomorrow, I will send it tomorrow. Even if my internet goes down, I'll send it tomorrow. It takes HUD usually about four to six weeks to review the annual action plan and approve it. And once they approve it, they notify us and then they put together our contract with Dane County. And then the contract goes through our legislative process. which takes about six weeks sometimes. And so once we go through that whole process, then HUD basically puts our money in our federal bank, not federal bank, but like our online system that we can draw funds from.

In years previous, has HUD ever, like within the four to six week period that you were talking about, ever been like, hey, change this or question anything that was in the action plan?

No, I think the first year that I did this, maybe in 2024, there were just some numbers that were off, but it wasn't anything that was wrong on our end. It was just that there weren't numbers that are off. Like there was a section that was missing or something, but no, they've never come back and said that it's not a viable application or anything like that since I've been here.

Awesome. Thank you.

Okay, any other questions, comments? Otherwise, I'd be looking for a motion to approve the 2026 Dane County CDBG Home Annual Action Plan as submitted. So move. Do I hear a second?

Second. Second.

All in favor?

Aye.

Aye. All right, motion carries. All right, next up, we have our 2026 CDBG Home Annual Action Plan, and I believe we have a report coming up.

Oh, I'm sorry, did you say? I think that was what we just did. Oh, you mean the... Oh, excuse me. Sorry, that was the attachment.

That was the attachment. My apologies. We caught that one. All right. The next one is the CDBG pro housing preliminary funding recommendation. That was the Yep, that's we don't have to approve that either.

No, we will. That's the third action item. Pro housing. Yeah.

Yep. So we just have to move on to them.

Right. So Kathy, so the application review team has preliminary funding recommendations. I don't know if Kathy, you wanted to talk about that.

Sure. Yep. We got five applications for the PRO housing request for proposals. If you recall, these were coming from specific communities and they could use these funds to look at what zoning and policies exist within their community that create barriers to the development of affordable housing. So that's the whole premise of the request for proposals. Of the five we got, one was deemed not eligible, and the other four that the team reviewed were from the city of Monona, Village of Deerfield, Village of Wannakee and the City of Sun Prairie. We reviewed those applications. The team met and all of them scored. You can see the average scores are on the On the far right side, they all scored above 80. They did a great job in these applications. I don't know if it was because the application was written so well that it was easy for them to do. I think that's the theory. But everyone did a good job, and the committee felt that they could all be funded at the requested amount. As you can see, we are recommending an award of about $280,000. That's the total of the four of them. We had a million dollars available to allocate, so there's enough money to fully fund each one of the applications. So what's before you is a recommendation of the application review team regarding um the allocation of these funds and i think that we need to get that approved so that they can move forward with the contracting Did I say everything I was supposed to?

Let me add one more thing real quick. So tonight is approving the preliminary funding recommendations, and then at the July 7th CDBG Commission meeting, it will be a public hearing, which is required. Okay. And then we'll finalize the funding recommendations at that time.

Okay. So we just need a motion to preliminarily approve these, or do we not need a motion? No, we do need a motion. Okay.

Thanks.

So move.

I had a question. So the remaining funds, the 720,000, 250,000, does that carry over?

Yeah, we talked about that at the committee meeting a lot, so I'm glad you brought those funds. They'll be around to application at some point so that other communities can apply for these funds if they want to in the future.

Okay. Can I just add something really quick? Thank you very much, Commissioner Kemp. So, yeah, the team is planning to release an annual RFP around September of this year still. One of the things that we're going to do, we believe we did a lot of outreach but one of the things that we're going to be doing is we're going to be following up after this rfp process is all completed we're going to be following up with the municipalities and asking them what happened you know why some of them did not apply we did a lot of outreach so we can then learn learn from from from that from that process so you know we might be able to learn from that experience and release that new rfp

Thanks. All right. So do we have a, I'm sorry.

Yeah, I got a question. Is the application period done for this already?

For this round, yeah. And then there'll be another one in September. Okay. So that if another community that didn't apply wanted to apply, they could do that in that second round.

How are the communities notified of this? Is it a grant opportunity or what?

Yeah, the staff has sent out numerous emails to all the communities to let them know that these funds are available and they'll do that again when they do the round two.

Because I just wondered why my community wasn't inherent. I just sent an email to my mayor to see why.

Why? Yeah. Well, there were, as we mentioned, there was a lot of outreach done. Staff did open office hours. They held workshops.

We actually initially, if I may say this, we actually initially did put out that interest form just to gouge, you know, what is what the interest. We did get 14 responses from that. And then we also on March 11, we have a webinar, you know, just to talk about the whole process. And then we have open hours from March 16 to March 20.

Some of the...

municipalities just didn't respond yeah and and we did have a number of municipalities who you know as we you know who who reach out and were interested at the end of the day we only received five applications and that's why some of the work that we're going to be doing after this rfp after this process closes then we're going to go back and and we're going to be checking with with some of those municipalities so we can try to figure out we believe that the application was easier it was quick, you know, for them to fill out. I think we only have four questions. So, yeah, we want to make sure that, you know, we get into that point because we want to make sure that folks who are able to apply for them to be able to do that.

This particular one was for zoning changes? Yeah. It was for zoning and... Was human services involved in this or was our zoning...

It was just zoning. Yeah, zoning. It was specifically zoning to make affordable housing.

Yeah, for affordable housing. There's some municipalities that may not want that.

Yeah. I mean, this is all part of the regional housing strategy that we've been through in the last 45 years. So more of us should take advantage of it.

i would also because i i did review these too so there's five right and we eliminated one staff eliminated one sitting qualifier or whatever but i thought they were all well written and i think it's because they're relatively sophisticated writers of these because this is kind of what they do and everything else and then uh the staff you guys control the disbursements to make sure that those monies are being used for what they intended to be used so That being the case, I think we had way more money than what was applied for, and they all qualified, and they all were well-written.

So I think that's why, as a group, we decided to... Yeah, and I will say that the process, having been through this process now... three times in three different fashions. This by far was the most streamlined. I think it was the easiest for the communities to be able to fill these out. I guess, Baltazar, I did have kind of a question. Do we know how long it takes... somebody to complete the application process. My wonder is if up front, when I'm reading an article or something online, it'll give me how long is this going to take you? And my wonder was if we have an idea of what that takes to complete.

So we did not look into how long it took, but one of the things that we just wanted to make sure is remove questions that were not necessary for us to be able to get to the results. We actually added a logic model. So instead of folks going on and on and writing pages and pages, they can just use that logic model. We are learning from experiences. You know, we do know that some folks maybe have some questions regarding the logic models. So we are going to be taking all of those things and reevaluate what we put together. But I think that's a great idea by sharing the gallons for us to, you know, be able to do that and try to figure out how long it takes. Yeah.

All right. So I have a question in regards to the fifth municipality that applied. So for that fifth municipality that staff deemed that they couldn't make it through our scoring, the arts scoring process, my question for the staff is, will that municipality be able to get feedback as to the reason why their application didn't move? forward. And then also my second question to that is, for that municipality, are they able to then reapply for the September RFP process that we are planning on doing?

Thank you very much, Commissioner. So, yeah, and one of the things that what happened is, you know, there were some municipalities who had the opportunity to cure their timeline because that was one of the big issues with eligibility. These municipalities did get the opportunity to cure their timeline, and after meeting with them, you know, they decided not to move forward. But I think, you know, that they will be able to apply.

Got it. Thank you.

Okay.

All right. Can we get a motion to?

We have a motion to approve the, as proposed, the federal housing preliminary funding recommendations.

Excuse me.

Motion to approve.

Second. Second with Commissioner Agnegelberger.

All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? All right. Not hearing any. Motion carries. Next up on our agenda is our future meeting items and dates. Our future meeting is on July 7th. And your agenda does say July 9th. So it is July 7th at 5 o'clock. And that will be the public hearing on the CDBG pro-housing funding recommendations. Did we have anybody, any public comments?

Not online. Is there anybody in the audience that would like to speak on an item? No. All right. Not hearing any. I will look for a motion to adjourn.

Second. Second. All in favor?

Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.

Aye. Aye.

Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.

Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.

Aye.

Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.

Aye. Aye. Aye.

Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.

Aye. Aye. Aye.