City Council - Special Meeting

I mean, that's something that we've been. wrestling with for years. People come here. Obviously, the folks that are inspecting these properties, whether to condemn or whatever they need to do to make things come into compliance, are very much aware of these issues way before it gets to council. Some of these things are, you know, five years they're working on and what when do we get engaged or are we going to get engaged with the heirs to give them some pathway or some understanding of what they need to do, could do, their air issues. Do we have any program in place?

The totals were 783,466. In the slides, it said something about raising housing preservation to 150, and that would bring the total to 833,466. So which amount are we considering, and where would the extra $50,000 go?

I think that kind of ties into, isn't it a half of 1% that we go towards the non-profits that this would be considered?

how many kids are being employed. I mean, if she goes over that amount, sometimes she'll come to us and say, I've got 20 kids that I can place, but I don't have the money. Can we come up with the money, which is a good program, which is an excellent program. The numbers have grown. Yeah, over time.

So just a follow-up to that, are there any services that are that were funded under the previous process that would no longer qualify for the current process?

So I know that we saw that list when we were having our budget conversations, but I probably don't have that piece of paper anymore. Can we get a copy of that? Okay, great. That was magical. Thank you for having that ready.

You were talking about some of the programs that might not qualify currently, and some of them were things that we might be able to use CDBG funds and other housing funds for. So explain to me, like some of these under neighborhood services, we have heirs property and housing preservation. How is that not coming out of?

for the New Hanover County Crime Lab and DSS. What is the water assist? Sorry, what page are you on? Page 55. And it says, New Hanover County Crime Lab and DSS water assist. I know where the crime lab is, but what is the water assist? That's for assisting on the waterway? It's called water assist with So is DSS water assistance? Am I getting each one?

So on the water assist, I know that we had that program many years ago before we created the authority. So we're committing to $363,000 to help those that can't pay the water bill?

That's one of the things that we've heard. And then the economic incentives and the miscellaneous, that's just, we've got money parked there just to do that or something.

I have a question about the strategies slide and the choice to focus on recreation and neighborhood services. How do we hone in on those two categories? Just glancing at this list, there are a number of organizations that don't fall into one of these buckets. These categories tend to be well supported by other funding organizations in our regional ecosystem. And so I'm just curious why we landed on these two.

Yeah, I think I understand for school, I'm thinking about Maybe some of the other organizations on here that work with families and crisis with people facing addiction with like how I just don't see them fitting into these categories, and I know, as I said it, I think there's been a lot of interest from large funders and recreation and i'm just wondering. we're piling money on top of big money if that's really, if we're really going to get what we want from the city support in terms of what we know we need in the city and what our residents are asking us to address locally.

I understand we don't have a social services department. I understand that that's a county function. I also, trying to think about how to frame this. I don't feel great about walking away from the commitment that we've made to some of the programs that serve the people in our city. And I'm not, and I apologize if my memory just isn't finding it, but I'm not aware of us having that conversation and that shift in strategy and direction. And I just, I'm not saying we shouldn't do that. I just don't, I just, we haven't had the conversation. And I wanna be very intentional about where we put the li

Are there concerns about the legality of where we're putting dollars where we have previously? I will refer to our legal counsel.

I just, I mean, I don't want to blow up the whole presentation. I just think that this is, if this is where we're starting, I'm not sure that we've had a conversation as a council to say this is the direction that we want to go.

know that that list could look very very different next year depending on the outcome of the process he probably should i think one of the things that david was referring to when we first got on council was that this was presented to us during the budget the the community funding was presented you know and the staff had filled it out and it was just presented during the budget and then we were being approached by different agencies who were saying, hey, why was our funding cut from last year? And we had no idea what went into the process. And so I think this is a much better process. I think t

I agree. I think this process is great. My question was not about the process. My question was about the priorities. And I don't think this council has had a conversation about what categories are our priorities. And I think that's what I'm pushing for and asking for.

So do we need to get the mason jars out again?

Yeah, and I want to be clear. I'm not opposed to the city supporting recreation and neighborhood services. It just feels like choices have already been made about priorities. So things like support for social programs, food programs, some of the housing, it looks like. And I understand that that can go somewhere else. Those categories are not on this slide. So those choices have been... I'm assuming that those choices have been made. And I'm not saying it's the wrong choice. I just don't think the people at this table participated in that conversation. And as the body that's responsible for se

We don't know to the very end who's applied. So if you want to keep us abreast as to, at the deadline, who has applied for these funds, it would be appropriate for us to know that.

Right? Because we don't know. Our new staff is evaluating the impacts that they would have based on the priorities that we're supposed to have. So that's one thing I think that we should get when the deadline ends. And as well as when the deadline, when we start the process, which I think is coming up, or if it's not already started. So those nonprofits that come to each and every one of us, because that's going to be, that's always an issue for any elected body. You're going to have some nonprofit comes up and says, how do I get money from the city? Well, have you made an application? Some of

So the other thing, Becky, I was going to ask, I know when you're doing the evaluation process, and that's something that if they're getting money from the state, if they're getting money from the feds, if they're getting money from the county, and you're leveraging those dollars to try to impact more and more people, that's something that I would think would score a high, correct?

So if I'm a small nonprofit, I think that we had something within our process that said you had to have some accounting, some P&L statement showing what the financial whereof of the nonprofit is, which When you talk to some of these nonprofits, it costs them a couple thousand dollars. We don't have that kind of money. We still have that in place in regards to making certain that they can finance you.

um that we're looking for feedback from y'all i think something in the middle we definitely need another conversation yeah and maybe some more buckets yeah i think it would also be helpful um i don't want to go through and like pick and choose agencies like you were talking about like i definitely think we need to have a contract in our fp and it needs to be competitive but it would be interesting to see what the category of organizations we've supported in the past to understand what the buckets have been um so that we can make a choice about what buckets to support moving forward uh my opini

Yes. I would prefer this time over like a 10 o'clock on a Tuesday or something. There's no great time.

Specifically come back tasked with what we would change in what we've seen tonight.