https://otter.ai/s/K5D9_VgWSDaKhKeO6h9IHA
0:00
Great. Well, thank you. So why don’t we go ahead and call the meeting to order. And I want to thank you all for taking time out of your day for this special meeting. I’m sure that you know this time between five and seven, you might have had some other things to do. But I’m grateful that we have a little bit of extra time to walk through this really important part of our work. So Alberto, are you going to kind of take us through this?
0:31
Yeah, once we get to that point in the agenda, I will, I will eat as PowerPoint.
0:37
Great. Got it. So why don’t we go ahead and I’ll ask if there’s any public invited to be heard.
0:48
No, there is not no public invited to be heard tonight.
0:51
Okay. Then l Umberto, I think that you have the floor and we’re ready just to be blown away.
1:01
Alright, I’m going to share my screen here.
1:07
Oh, and by the way, can you just give, if you wouldn’t mind starting with just a real quick summary of why we’re doing this and why it’s important for everybody. We have good context on it. Thank ya.
1:20
Yeah, I’ll be happy to have you to chair.
1:23
So chair and board members we, um, as we prepare for the 2021 funding cycle. As you all know, we’ve been involved in a human service needs assessment this year that will help decide how we allocate Human Services funding agency funding for the next five years until we do our next Human Services needs assessment. And so this work that we are doing tonight is of utmost importance as you review what our our pastor or what I call current on the on the slideshow, but really, it’s It’s the priorities that came out of the previous Human Services needs assessment that we have been following. And then decide on how we will forward for the next five years, as far as our priority areas, and also our activities within those priorities that we feel represent the highest need for the community. And then Karen, I’m not sure if you want to share anything else before I move on.
2:37
Oh, I think you I think you haven’t.
2:39
Okay. So tonight, what I want to do is I want to walk you through this PowerPoint and please feel free to stop me at any moment and ask a question. There is a lot of information on this PowerPoint, I understand that. I will try and not I’ll try and be be as quick as possible, but also want to make sure that That I set the right context and that there is understanding. There are 22 slides in the PowerPoint and so we’re gonna we’re we’re gonna go through these as quickly as possible but please feel free to stop me if you have questions. And I’ve kind of the the structure of this PowerPoint is in is basically current slash past and future and what you what you as a board where you all as a board want to set for that future. So we’re gonna, I’m gonna go ahead and get started. Oh, there you go. So these priorities, it says current priorities, what you’re really seeing are the priorities that were set from the previous human service needs assessment that happened in 2016. We created these buckets and thank you, Steph, for for making these buckets for me. And we said these were the buckets that we were We’re going to fund the we want to fund activities that live within these buckets. And we I also put on there, the actual allocations that we we set aside for this year’s funding for 2020. these are these are what we, we as a board created, these are not what actually happened and I didn’t you know, the we can look at those if you guys want but but primarily we want to show you is here’s how we did it divvied up the allocation based on priorities. So this these are the big buckets that we have funded for since 2016. And within those buckets, we have weighted activities and these weight activities came out of the human services needs assessment process in 2016. And they were the ones that Karen and I reviewed when we looked at applications and see you know what activities Were the programs addressing when they applied. And so each big bucket had these smaller buckets that we looked at to see, you know, for example, in the housing stability, I’m not going to, you know, go over all of them in particular, but, for example, if they were if they were providing transitional shelter or deposit support, or, you know, if they if they were doing that in their program that was credited toward them as a weighted activity, right, and each way did activity was worth a certain amount of points. And then, so just to remind you, when we do we do the allocation formula, the matrix, it was it was a three parts score. It was the average of your score. It was the average of Karen and I are my score. And then it was the weight, whatever it was weighted, and this is where the weight came from. Right. were they doing these actions activities. And so each, each of our six priority areas had activities that were decided upon by the needs assessment. Right? So these things are being provided, those are part of the weights so each of them had it and some have more than others just because of what came out of the meetings that that the city of Longmont had in 2016. You know that that was that some of the things that came out of some of the six priorities had more than others, some have less
6:37
but each one had some
6:45
here’s where it gets confusing and I want to make sure that I explained this very well. So long my did its work. It created it did the human service needs assessment. It identified needs Created activities that would be weighted for to, to how well those activities met the needs. But we are part of a collaborative, right. It’s not just Longmont. There’s a city of Boulder and Boulder County as a collaborative, we all met and and brought our our needs assessments because boulder did something similar. And and we negotiated and said, All right, so we may have our own individual jurisdictional needs and needs assessment. But we need to agree on common goal areas for when the agencies are applying. These are the places that these are the goal areas that they can apply to. Right, these are the things that we’re going to fund. So these came to came out of those conversations, and they get looked at every year. They haven’t I don’t Karen can answer this, but I don’t think they’ve been changed every year. I feel that they’ve been pretty consistent, but they’re changed as a collaborative not as individual jurisdiction.
8:08
Yeah, I would add is that our our common goal areas haven’t changed and we kept the same ones since we were working on the 2016 needs assessment. I think the other ones, some of the other entities added goal areas based on updates to their needs assessment, but ours ours haven’t changed.
8:29
Okay, so I’m gonna go through those here in a second. Um, so these are the common goals. There’s a hidden I think there’s 16 of them, and we’ll in Longmont to Karen’s point, some of the ones that were added. Were not things that were funded. We decided we weren’t going to fund and this for our agencies, just so you all know, is a there is a chart, a table in the instructions that does that connects these goal areas to our priority areas. So they can see, if you’re applying to this goal area in the application you’re actually applying, you’re actually applying to this priority area for a long month, or this priority area for Boulder. Boulder County doesn’t really have any priority areas, they they’re a little, they’re a little more flexible. They basically took ours and that was fine. So, so these are these are what people get when when, when an applicant fills out the application, this is a drop down list for them. And whenever they fill out this is in the program section. And so when they look at the programs, this is the first question is what what is the program area goal area that you’re applying. And so they hit this drop down and they get this list of 16. Right. And some of us align very well with our priority areas and some don’t. Actually two of them don’t. Everything else we were able to connect with our priority areas.
9:57
The and these were added by
10:00
By the city of Boulder, I think these are city of Boulder error areas. So the total of 16 we fund 14 and we don’t fund two of them. Okay? So those is what’s on the application. And we have to connect. So the reason I shared this with you all is because when we make our decisions, my job will then be to take your decisions and find a way to make sure that they are in line or they connect to these common goal areas. Okay. So that that’s what that’s what these are for. Alright, so now we’re moving to here’s where were we these are the recommendations that have come out of the human services needs assessment, okay. Or that I this is what I if you all saw some of you guys read the hundred and 38 page and see something else. Let me know But this is what I, when I read the recommendation section I said, Okay, these are the recommendations that they’re saying. And again, some of them are, some of them are more specific. Some of them are broad. But I want to just take some time to review them.
11:14
Basically at either
11:16
there’s about eight of them. Or maybe more. I forget what we’ll find out a second. But these are the these are the things that came out. So they want us to support employment, they want to work on that access piece on the no wrong door for access to human services, increased case management capacity around around our nonprofits. Ensure that folks have access to the, you know, the new digital world, and that could be providing, you know, you will see some of the activities that address it more, more in particular, they talked about improving crisis mental health services. Continue to support access to childcare. And so those are the ones that came out of this human services needs assessment. And the next step I took is I went back to the hundred and 38 Pages document and I read through all of the sections. And so if these are the these are the recommendations, what activities are found with that support those recommendations, right, so so we know when an applicant fills out the application and we look at their programs that they’re that they are proposing. Do they include the activities that are supporting the recommendations? And so I went through them and there’s like 20, some of them and so, these, these are activities that are within those recommendations. So for example, you know what The recommendation on the digital divide, Here are several. Right? So increasing broadband, digital literacy, even increasing access to device charging, right? So these are just some examples of here’s the broader recommendation. And these are the activities that will support that if that was their priority. These are the activities that would support that priority. And so we would look at a program we would say, what does that program do these things and we would decide if they do what the way that they get
13:40
there’s some more
13:50
and and this is the final page.
13:55
So these are all the activities they recommended
13:59
in it In their report.
14:04
And so really the questions that I have or that we have for you is to is to help us decide on what are their priorities for the next five years, what are what are we going to be funding? What are we going to be looking at? So, basically, given that you seen the recommendation activities, the board has to decide a couple of things. One is, do you want to keep the current six broad bucket priorities? Or do you want to go in a different direction? For example, you could just say, well, we’re going to, since these are the recommendations from the report, we’re going to make those things and I would word them as priorities right now, their recommendations, I’d have to, I’d have to work with the wording and make them as our priority areas or is there another way that the board wants to go And once we do that, then you have to decide or is do we keep the current activities? those original buckets I showed you? Do we adopt all the 28 new activities, and then it would be up to Karen and I to set to, to arrange them. And then look at because the board doesn’t do this work Karen and I do this work is we read through the applications and we seek out what the program activities are and do they fit the the activities that we have deemed to be a need in the community and then then allocate a weight to them. Or you could just say, you could ask, you could direct the staff to choose new activities based on the priority areas that are chosen.
15:45
liberto. Could you go back to the last slide?
15:49
Yes.
15:51
So under health and well being is that mental health as well?
15:55
Yes, that included mental health.
16:00
Thank you. And how about the programs? Which programs have worked the best in this group? I mean, how do you collect the data to know of all this? All these things are being taken care of?
16:17
Well, just so you know,
16:19
the most of the programs fall within these six. From read I remember like, most Yeah, many, many of them do all within the six.
16:30
Well, that’s for all the programs is accessibles. The each of the other ones. I mean, it’s housing stability, working, as well as Safety and Justice. Or how do you how do you determine the
16:44
if it’s successful or not?
16:47
Well, currently, the way that we do it is that we allow it that really happens in the contracting piece, Karen and that usually happens by we allow the agencies to set their own goals and not be Comes with, when they write their program, they say this is what we’re gonna do. And then we measure, we measure success by their reports and their own work. Right? We’re not setting their outcomes for them. We just say you have to work in in this area. And then they give us the outcomes in the way that we measure success. For example, I’m almost done going through the mid year reports and I can and I can see by those mid year reports, which agencies are struggling to meet the goals that they that and outcomes that they stated in their in their application and ultimately their their contract.
17:37
Oh, okay. Thank you.
17:44
Council Member Christiansen.
17:52
I think that these six things are very good that they really do cover a lot. I do think Though, that we need to be cognizant of asking more questions, or some questions having to do with equity, whether this is actually reaching a broad range of low income people or whether the programs are only reaching, you know, people of a certain income people of a certain
18:31
ethnicity.
18:34
I think we need you know, this is really kind of come to Jesus moment in our nation and I believe that this is a good opportunity to make sure that these things really do have a foundation of equity. I’m not quite sure how to do that except to maybe have an accountability question on there not having to do necessarily with how many board Members, we already asked that how many board members for instance, or have anything other than
19:06
wass background, but I’m
19:12
just more of a study of who they’re reaching in terms of income level and as
19:21
race or ethnicity.
19:24
What I’m concerned with right now,
19:27
so remember Chris’s and we do ask and I was gonna remove it, but we just keep it in there. Because it is it is a burden, some agencies but we do, we do have two tables on our application, one table that looks at at clients race and ethnicity and we have another table that looks at client’s income, an ami scale. So we do that already.
19:55
So we can keep those in the application.
19:59
It’s just harder. Some so for some of our agents who don’t give an example of an agency that that doesn’t that struggle with that because of the because of the nature of their work, safe shelter, for example. Some of the folks that they assist, they don’t ask a lot of questions. Right. And it makes sense, the just the nature of that work and the sensitivity that you want to have toward people in that situation. It makes sense not to ask a lot of questions and just provide support. So So
20:33
yeah, that’s, that’s right. And we have to be sensitive to that to that when it has to do with Well, people who are HIPAA, things we they can’t ask a lot of things. Children, they’re they’re prohibitions on asking a lot of I mean, a lot of the people in these programs are in specially vulnerable obviously, in vulnerable situations and they will can’t ask the question. So it is difficult. I know. Yeah,
21:04
but the majority of them do the majority and do provide their, their who their client and, um, you know, I don’t necessarily always report on it, but I, I have that data and I could report on it, it would just take some time to, to compile it, but I have the data.
21:21
Li better I think we’re we’re just removing the income table.
21:25
Right. That’s what we’re gonna remove
21:26
the race and ethnicity table because what we found is that the generally speaking most of the entities do, sir. No, Mo two to moderate income households. And, and some of the services you know, are important to have regardless of what your income is, which, like domestic violence ellenberger talks about so we we did remove the income table, because we just felt it just wasn’t super helpful. And, you know, I think Jeff How we have the services outline. You know, it seemed like most everyone was, you know, moderate or low income.
22:09
So but some, Kaitlyn has had her hand up long enough that she had to switch arms get tired. And then Graham has a comment as well after Caitlin.
22:25
So I appreciate knowing that we’re asking the agencies about race and ethnicity. One of the things that strikes me from the list of activities that came from the human service needs assessment is that that if we could get information around the age
22:45
of
22:46
those who are served, so there’s, there’s quite a few activities that are relative to our senior population, and quite a few that are relative to particularly kids in school. And I think so it would be helpful either If it’s not exact understanding who’s being sort of like, targeted in that in the services, because those are really clear needs that we’ve got. And then also, and I this may be comes out in how the programs are designed, but we’ve got a lot around folks who are disabled and needing to make have specific services that assist with those particularly vulnerable populations. And so I think making sure that, that we’re actually hitting those vulnerable populations. Because it would be it’s really easy for some of these things around like housing stability, to sort of just do it based on like, generally, but if we’re not, if I’m just throwing out like if we have, you know, a 10% population that’s, you know, disabled, but only 2% of who served by our housing stability falls into that mix. There’s a question of whether we’re actually hitting the right like, places to provide those services. And so I’m looking for ways that we can detect if, if there’s a mismatch in what we would expect for who they’re serving.
24:17
Thank you, Caitlin Graham.
24:28
Did Nicole permanently mute you?
24:35
Oh, there you go.
24:39
Can you hear me now? We can. Sweet. So I guess I would like would just clarity around the question, are we considering replacing the sort of the main six priority areas with slide 15, which is the human service needs assessment? priority areas, are we saying do we replace They’re the activities with the activities we’ve been operating with are both
25:09
Ah, see get to 15 here.
25:13
So yeah, I think that’s the question. The question is, I think is both Graham I think it’s it replace. You replace the six with the eight or a or a collection of the eight we don’t do for example. Traditionally, our funding has not has not been involved or not supported employment support. Right. That’s been kinda we left to the county because of county workforce. So as an example, someplace that even though they recommend it,
25:46
we have not traditionally funded it
25:49
in the past,
25:52
so that I think that that’s a conversation for the board to have and decision for the board to make.
25:57
The minister seems to me that we should Take the human service news recommendations. And I mean, certainly some of these eight are consistent with the six we’ve been operating with, you know, mental health, for example, and employment support and housing stability. So some of these, I guess, could just be subsumed under under these, you know, one and two are definitely mentioned.
26:29
So, I think, I think what I would add is that, if you look at the recommendations, so some of them are very specific kind of activities and functional areas, and others are so like we say, emphasize No Wrong Door approach. You know, that’s really kind of a how to, not a wife. And the same way be mindful of the impacts of continued school closures on families and children employers. So that’s really not a thing to find if you know i mean so. So I think that’s why he kind of went back to whatever slide that was Elberta, which was our original six areas and to see if as you look at those funding recommendations that’s on slide 15. And you look at some of the activities, do you think that the existing buckets if you will capture most of these or would you make any modifications in some of those those buckets?
27:39
Let’s go to Jake and then and
27:42
thanks for sure. Um, so just because this is kind of how I operate, I went ahead and just kind of jotted down a potential proposal that could be worth discussing on these buckets specifically on kind of keeping a lot of The same buckets that we have, but also based on Councilmember Christensen’s mention of equity, including an equity piece, which is important. So I’m just gonna throw this out there. I’m not making a motion or anything I just, this is kind of how it made sense in my brain as a potential way to do this taking into combination everything. So we I so we have seven buckets, it would be the first one is housing stability, I kept just we could keep so this is my if I ran the universe, essentially. first bucket is housing stability at 20%. second bucket is a new bucket of equity and opportunity. I’m calling it at 15%. third bucket is self sufficiency and resilience, moving that up a bit to 15% and that would include employment support, based on the HSN a recommendation. The fourth bucket is education and skill building at 13%. The fifth bucket is health and well being at 13%. Safety and Justice at 12% of food and nutrition. It’s bumped down a bit at seven to 12%. based mostly on if I’m correct, Alberto, I didn’t see much in the document related directly to food and nutrition in terms of needs that we’re hearing. So again, it’s housing stability at 20. Equity and opportunity at 15. self sufficiency and resilience 15 include that employment support, education skill building at 13 health and well being 13 Safety and Justice at 12. And food nutrition at 12. That’s, that’s the idea that I have on the top of my head, I’ll throw it out to the members of the board and if anybody strongly disagrees, I think that gives us a good blend of buckets. So
29:45
that’s just a thought. Thank you, Jake. So let’s let’s hold that as a, you know, put it in the upper left hand corner as a reference.
29:55
And go ahead with your comments.
29:58
I guess. I’d want to see those Because this, I mean, we can’t
30:04
like when I’m looking at these recommendations emphasize No Wrong Door approach to human services intake.
30:13
Um, you know, social services does that there’s not an agency that goes into number two, there’s not an agency that goes that’s going to ask for this money. That’s going to go into number three. There are some agencies that might go into four.
30:32
But
30:34
that’s, I guess that’s what I’m looking at. It’s like, if you get the smaller amount, everything fits into it and all the agencies fit into it.
30:45
So
30:49
thank you, Anne. So I, I’m having a real hard time reconciling these lists because the nature of them as you’ve pointed out is so different. The I almost feel and I think, Jake, this is part of where you were headed. I almost feel like the activities are more useful in defining what we’re funding and in this case of comparison than the actual, what we consider the recommendations or focus areas, because they seem to be more definitive in terms of explaining what actually will happen with the money, how that fits into the agencies. And so with that, remind me please Ella Barrett or Karen did, who who organized the activities was that staff or was that the board? Like in terms of putting them in buckets or prioritizing?
31:57
Well, I mean, I think that we What we try to do is to really look at those activities. And we, we some staff really did that to make sure that all of those, so these activities, then what are they really? You know, then we came up with what the, you know what the
32:19
club this
32:20
this approach is a little different than in 2016 I guess but, um, I think we kind of, you know, staff really worked with that with the with the with the with the consultants and the input from the community to take all the different activities and and make sure that they fit under the you know, the appropriate buckets.
32:42
Yeah. Hi, sir.
32:48
Okay, so la Berto. Did you did you did go ahead and you found a place for all of these activities, right.
32:59
So when you Say found a place
33:01
in an existing bracket, or did you create? Did you suggest any new bucket? I have not done that.
33:08
At this point I just I just listed them. But again, the reality is that most of these books most of these activities today, I do have a question about what about that new bucket Jake was asking. Yeah, but most of these buckets mostly into those broader buckets. The question is, for me, is, do we want to fit all of them which will broaden the activities that get waited? Or, you know, or do we narrow it and say the of it once I once I would, once we organize the activities in the buckets? You know, if one bucket has 10 we’re going to choose five you don’t and so it would be about prioritizing the activities within if there is there’s there’s too many If, if not, it would be easier not to just organize them into the bucket because again, most fit very easily into those bigger buckets. Yeah.
34:12
And did you have your hand up?
34:15
Sorry, is am still with us
34:23
and is not so Councilmember Christiansen and Deanna and Jake, did you have your hand up? Okay.
34:31
Let’s still here.
34:33
Oh, well, there you are. You showed up popped up on my screen. Did you have your hand up as well? No. Okay. Okay. I’m like the auctioneer. Go ahead, Councilmember Christian.
34:46
Yes, you are. Um,
34:51
this is I have the same problem. I think that we are getting. I want us to think about whether All these things are being covered by someone. But each were part of a collaborative, but we all work differently to as you know, and things are taken care of differently by different organizations, for instance, with digital inclusion, if what that means is people having access to
35:25
low cost,
35:28
Internet access, everybody in Longmont should have that but they don’t because of various things, but everybody should have access to next slide, which is very low in costs. And they also provide
35:48
particularly low cost plans for people who can’t afford it otherwise. So that’s something that we do already. That the city does. already. And Boulder, for instance, the city of Boulder doesn’t do that because they don’t have their own internet provider, blah, blah, blah. Then there’s something about digital literacy. Well, this, the Senior Center provides some of that the library provides some of that intercambio provides some of that the school system provides some of that. So we’re not funding that through agencies really, there already are places that are doing that. And
36:32
we do give money to into
36:35
intercambio, for instance.
36:39
So
36:41
I think what we need to do is maybe examine whether these things are being provided by somebody to make sure that we’re not dropping the ball on any of these but I feel like we are. We need to just make sure that these are being covered by somebody. I do feel like the things that we are not doing much, um, our jobs, because everybody says that’s provided by workforce. It’s not really, or it’s also provided by the school system through career counseling.
37:15
And
37:17
normally, a city would have a program like that through its development, but ours is we’ve outsourced our development to led up and, and they don’t really do that. The other thing is we desperately need a crisis mental health center. But everything that would have to be provided by mental health partners, we can’t force them to do that. So it is it’s confusing, in that a lot of these things are provided for by other, some of them by agencies, some of them might go I think some of them by other entities. And so I think as long as we can examine these and see whether we’re, we’re failing to provide these or somebody’s failing to provide them in Longmont. I would rather do it that way. I think that the the, our emphasis on housing is appropriate because if you don’t have a roof over your head, you can’t do anything else.
38:35
Thank you, Deanna.
38:39
So in looking at this list of 28 activities, I was thinking that it looks like as people have said that pretty much we can fit these activities into the current existing like those four, those six large bucket areas, except maybe the digital literacy types of issues. I guess what I’m wondering is if maybe this is a more appropriate to sort of tweak this Some buckets, I’m just going to call them. Like if you think about where digital literacy could go, it could be under self sufficiency and resilience, or it could be education and skill building. So maybe the larger bucket areas are
39:15
specific enough in the sub bucket areas need to be expanded somewhat. And then, on another topic, I’m wondering about these activities. If we go through and sort of assess that there. What do we say 28 activities? If we are basing funding needs off of these 28 activities, do something like half of them fit under one large bucket like housing? Or do you know what I’m saying? I feel like we should be tying the 28 activities to the buckets in terms of the percentages of funding that we’re requesting for those specific areas too, because if half of these go under one bucket, then obviously we should be asking for more fun, or we should be pushing for more funding for that one larger bucket if that makes sense.
39:58
You know,
39:59
Brian, thank you Can you interject? So you should have gotten a very colorful spreadsheet that looks like this in your packets? And that’s what I was referring to earlier is that liberto laid this all out. He, he took that data and put it in the PowerPoint. But But in that document, and I think I’m going to have Alberto bring that up, but if you will refer to that in your packets. So he, he basically took if you go from left to right, you know, starting at the far left column, those are the those are the buckets, if you will, right. So those are the social determinants of health, or the safety net pillars that we talked about. And then if you go next to that, then those are the areas the goal areas of focus that we have, that we have paid attention to as part of that Each of these buckets, if you will, and then and then what is currently weighted in terms of those activities from our 2016 assessment. And then if you look at the, the human service, needs assessment recommendations, and that, you know, next, that next column, then those are the areas that came out of our assessment that we just completed. And then what Alberto did in the far right column, is take all those activities, and he lined them up. Again, this might not be perfect. Ellie bird does pretty perfect, but you know, you might have some other ideas about that. But he did take an attempt at at aligning those weighted activities with you know, with those safety net pillars and, and activities that support the various recommendations that came out of the 2020 needs assessment. So I think this document might be a little easier to navigate than the PowerPoint. I think the PowerPoint was a good overview. But But, you know, and and again, back to Jake’s point. So Jake said, you know, I’m thinking there should be another, we should have another buckets? And if so I think that’s, you know, that’s fine. And then what activities would really go under, you know, under that particular equity and opportunity, whatever. But I think that this spreadsheet might be more helpful to navigate this conversation. Sorry, but I thought,
42:37
Yeah, thanks. Thank you, Karen, that this really is helpful this spreadsheet because it essentially does what I was looking for. And and you had your hand up and then Caitlin.
42:49
Oh, I just, maybe we don’t want to get into it. But I think people don’t know what agencies are asking for the money and if we could show them that Maybe they’d understand a little bit better, but otherwise it’s fine.
43:07
Okay, thank you, Anna. Caitlin.
43:10
Thanks. I want I have a question. And I am not sure if it’s not 100% sure if it’s,
43:17
if it matters to us, but,
43:18
um, that list of common goal areas. I know, Alberto, you mentioned that there’s 16, and we fund 14 of them is, can you tell? Can you expand on why we don’t fund those two, and if there’s room for us to fund those two, or how they kind of fit in with these buckets, because the two that are identified there, seem to line up pretty closely with what board member Marcin was saying around equity. Um, and so I’m kind of curious of like the intersection of not funding those two and our buckets and how that
43:56
how that works. I can take that so so really, that was Those two areas, were not areas that showed up in our 2016 needs assessment. Going forward, we might decide we want to do that. But when Elijah said we didn’t do that, you know, we didn’t find that in 20 and 20. Those were not areas that showed up in our, in our needs assessment. And I think the other thing is that the city of Longmont funds a lot of those activities directly in services that we provide directly and through other avenues. So those are the basically those are the two reasons I
44:38
got it. I think one of the things that I’m thinking of is that so Jake mentioned this idea of a seventh bucket. And one of the things that strikes me is that across all of the main six buckets that we’ve had in the past, that that those questions of equity hit in all of them, it almost feels like setting it aside as a separate bucket I’m not 100% sure how that would work? Or if it makes more sense to think about how do we prioritize things that hit those pieces around equity in every single one of the other buckets to make sure that programs and agencies that are working on those equity pieces are prioritized, for example, like that those that should be coming up across all of them.
45:29
Thank you, Caitlin. So Jake had his hand up. And, Roberto, I know you do too. Do you have a direct response to clarifying?
45:37
Yeah, yeah, I was gonna respond to Caitlin but Jake, Jake, can can go first and then I can go ahead.
45:44
Alberto, go for it.
45:46
Okay, so I think that’s a very good idea, Caitlin.
45:52
I think that that could be a
45:56
you know, that that could be Um, I don’t know if We would track it at this point in the application in the end. So I got it part of the challenges is the timing that we have. It is challenging. But we could what when you said that the first thing that came to my mind was could we add a weighted activity to whatever buckets we end up choosing? Right? Let’s say we keep the six, but we add awaited activity that says something to the fact of increases equitable service delivery or or opportunity, right, instead of creating, like, instead of creating a seventh bucket, we make sure that equity is part of the weighted activities in all in all the other buckets.
46:45
So that’s just that’s what came to top of mind when you said that. I
46:50
think you know what, bronto Jake.
46:54
So yeah, just from a funding perspective, and knowing how we think about how he C’s apply and which agencies choose to apply and which ones we choose to fund. I think, for me at least, having a dedicated bucket, and again, I don’t know, looking at these activities, I’d have to go down the list and pick out which ones enhance equity and opportunity. I also think from an organizational perspective, adding an extra bucket with a dedicated percentage that we’re saying no, we are specifically targeting agencies that support equity and opportunity in our community agencies that enhance equity and opportunity. If we if we make that commitment, that for me is going to be a lot more palatable than saying we’re going to put a weighted piece on equity at every bucket. I understand the logistics of it, and logistically, it’s tricky. But I also know that if we make that choice to have an extra bucket that will wind up funding. dedicating more dollars to agencies that support equity and opportunity just because of how our process works. That That would be my thought, again, I’m not going to, I’m not going to die on this hill because I think everybody on this on our board is committed to equity and opportunity in a very real way, this funding cycle. But if we are committed to it, I say we need to be committed to it and find a way to do that. And to find a way to say we are specifically putting aside in my initial proposal, it would have been 15% of our dollars, specifically going to agencies that enhance equity and opportunity and put them in a separate funding in a separate funding bucket. Because for those who haven’t been a part of the process before, typically the way we do our funding hearings, is they’re all on the same day for each of these different buckets or they’re all categorized by each of these different buckets, right. So from my perspective, we have a dedicated day. We’re dedicated funding bucket for agencies that enhance equity and opportunity in our community, we’re gonna do a much better job providing them with dollars than if we don’t. So that’s where I’m at with it. I’m happy to continue to talk about the logistics of it. But I wouldn’t think of it more along the agency lines necessarily. I mean, I’ll leave it at that. I’ll leave it at that.
49:24
Grant.
49:26
So could we maybe take a case study and flesh that out a little bit? Like, let’s pick an organization that we think might qualify for that bucket? And sort of think about how that would work out in the process? To help me to understand what we’re talking about. Do you have a Jake, do you have an organization in mind?
49:42
Yeah, I mean, I guess I guess the the textbook case study would probably be alchemy. Tei would probably be the the textbook agency that we’d be talking about. And elcometer has been an agency that for the last two years because of you know, two years to psych two funding cycles ago. They did get funded and council stepped in. And that’s, I think, a flaw in our in our in our system. So that would be a potential. I mean, that was for lots of different reasons. I understand that there were issues without Clemente in the agency and they many of those still exist. But they would probably be the the simplest agency that you could look at and say the activities that they provide the services that they provide enhance equity and opportunity in our community. That would probably be the textbook
50:26
Oberto.
50:27
So grandma would have not been funded by the city of Longmont, at least not in this way. And that would be out Boulder County. They have applied for funding via to Karen’s point parties and we haven’t funded because we do have other venues for funding. For example, our elnec funding has funded I think out Boulder County for some of their some of their projects or some of their events.
50:55
Jake
50:58
another one, remind me the name of the agency laboratorial Karen, the LGBTQ talk therapy agency that came in last year.
51:07
We are after its
51:08
yet grassroots, we did not fund them. if my memory serves correctly, they did not qualify for dollars in in this model, with a dedicated bucket toward equity and opportunity, if we’re saying these agencies serve this mission of equity and opportunity, they could potentially come into more direct line for $4, at least in my level, in my line of thinking, if we create this additional bucket, well, I think they qualified and because they qualified under health and well being, but you know, it was just about the, the points but again, it’s back to what we it’s how we’re framing it, right. So if we’re we would be framing them more along the lines of an equity and opportunity agency as opposed to a health and well being agency. The service that they provide is great, but we could potentially look at them from an equity standpoint as opposed to To health and well being standpoint, because when you’re up against because when you’re in health and well being in that category you’re competing against, you’re not competing, but you’re you’re in the same conversation with, you know, a ton of different agencies who provide vastly different services than what their service than what they provide. So that’s another potential example. Just a thought.
52:21
I want to make sure we’re getting everybody. Everybody has an opportunity to add and Chiquita I’m concerned because I saw an animal attacking you earlier. Hopefully you’re okay. Do you have any thoughts on this that you want to share?
52:40
Um,
52:43
I want to make sure that I understand everybody’s viewpoint I, I want to make sure that us trying to make sure that we are equitable, that we are really truly being equitable by separating organizations and saying this organization is the one who’s Providing equitable services or whatever, that we’re not making sure that we’re being equitable to all organizations at the same time, if that makes sense. Am I making sense? No. Yeah. But I do agree with that, that extra understand the extra bucket, but I want to make sure that we’re not eliminating other organizations by having an extra bucket towards equity and not really being equitable, if that makes sense. Yeah.
53:31
Okay.
53:36
Yeah, I mean, I don’t know if we’re making it more difficult than what it really is. To me. Um, of course, I have not had this process. So I’m learning as you all are talking at the same time, so I get the spreadsheet in. I know when 2016 the digital divide wasn’t Part of that. So I definitely want to make sure that we include that and more emphasis on Safety and Justice, because I don’t think that was really a big, big thing. But now is more so at the forefront. So I definitely want to make sure we emphasize on that as well. Of course, housing is huge. So I don’t know, I’m just listening to everyone, every, every everybody have really good points. I just want to make sure we are inclusive on the equity aspect. And that and that the digital divide is very important because that’s, that’s dealing with our youth and education as well. And not only our youth in education, but our seniors. So I don’t know what bucket that will be in under ethic education, but also our seniors as well. I don’t want to leave them behind. So
54:58
great. Thank you.
55:03
Yes, Karen.
55:06
You’re You’re muted Karen.
55:11
I think the equitable and I think it’s like double dipping, you’re going to do equitable, and then maybe you’re part of the housing. So it’s like a double dip there. I don’t think that’s kind of a good thing.
55:24
If I’m understanding that, right, yeah.
55:27
Okay. Thank you. I just want to add a couple comments. And I’m just thinking through this kind of procedurally. So my my first comment is, I think the buckets work pretty well. And I’m starting to understand that they’re really just serving as general headers, right. And we’re going to base distribution of funding on the activities, not really the general headers. So I like the way you’ve done the Scylla barito. I do think that it’s important to name equity. I think if we don’t give it a name in our somewhere in our plan, it’s easier for it to slip, it’s easy for it not to get attention. So whether that’s a separate bucket, and maybe under that bucket, there’s just simply a note that says we have added this to the process in order to include equity in all of these areas, or whatever it is, right? Doesn’t mean we have to give it funding but it has a name, it has a place at the table. And I was also wondering if, if safety, comma justice comma and equity doesn’t work, at least for this, this needs assessment cycle because when I look at Safety and Justice, we have address racial tension in current climate, increase x access to legal support for older adults or people with disabilities. Let’s see increased capacity for law enforcement in and around engagement with residents. That to me, those are also equity issues. Those are directly equity issues. And it’s I’m having a hard time they seem really interrelated, particularly in this environment. So just a suggestion or a possibility. Alberto, and then Jake.
57:30
Yeah, let me just answer that. So I want to be very clear about this piece, that those activities are in those buckets, because that’s what I were I thought fit. Right. So I want to be clear, so the board could say no even thought, I don’t think I don’t think that that necessarily fits there. So I just want to be clear that those are arbitrary. I put them there because it made sense in my mind saying Okay, so this to me, these fit here, but if you all do agree with that. That is totally fine. We can change them. So I just want to make that clear.
58:06
Okay. I think you have a beautiful mind. So we’re gone with it. At least I am. I’m sorry, I don’t I can’t speak for everybody. So I think it would Jake, you are next and then was a Jake. Okay. Now, Councilmember Christiansen then Caitlin, is anybody else wanting to get in the queue while the queue is open, and then an okay.
58:27
I just wanted to respond to a couple of things that I’ve heard. Just quickly on this. This point to Karen’s point, I understand the thought that it could be double dipping. I just I strongly disagree. I don’t think it’s double dipping for us to highlight equity and opportunity as a separate category and to really spotlight it. I think it creates exactly what you said Mr. Chair, which is a plan a space separate from any other agencies that may or may, that my thinking on this as an agency that may or may be on the bubble for funding. If we highlight them as an agency that offers equity opportunity and agency that does support that goal. And we put them in a separate bucket, they’re more likely to get dollars. That’s where my my head is thinking. So it’s not along the lines of double dipping. It’s about lifting up agencies that meet this key goal. And, Mr. Chair, to your point on on those Safety and Justice plus the making it like a safety, justice and equity piece, I hear you. I really feel strongly though, that that while those issues are equity issues, they are not the only equity issues. And by lumping us by lumping those issues in with issues of you know, criminal justice and and those sorts of issues, we we potentially lose out on other pieces of the equity conversation. So that would be my concern. I could potentially get to that get to where you’re at though I I really I appreciate that, that thought i’d i am Yeah, I appreciate everybody’s thoughts on that and then I’ll be quiet.
1:00:06
I wrote down the order. I think I haven’t right Councilmember Christiansen
1:00:13
okay. I don’t mean to be disagreeable, but I think I agree with Chiquita that I think we’re making in in a way making this a little more difficult than it needs to be. And I as I said before, I think that equity and opportunity is the core, the foundation of every single one of these buckets, historically, particularly, for instance, housing. If all the newly freed slaves had gotten what Sherman promised them, which was 40 acres and a mule that would have solved a whole lot of problems because they can tell you they would have gone to town and worked hard and been Very successful. But they didn’t get that they didn’t. Then there was a backlash in the 20s. I mean, redlining, the GI Bill discriminated against African Americans who came back redlining discriminate against people. It’s foundational to have equity and opportunity in each one of these things. Because the reason people need these extra services and a safety net is because a lot of it is has been denied them systematically throughout history, and that’s why we have to be sure that programs are not just they are open to everyone. And they are non discriminatory. And I really can’t emphasize too strongly that I think it’s the foundation of every one of these programs that that they do have Equity and opportunity. And I believe that opportunity that that’s exactly what these are all supposed to be about.
1:02:08
Thank you, Caitlin. And then Anne.
1:02:14
Thanks. Um, so I guess I want to
1:02:19
build on what Jake said around the safety, justice and equity. I think we had as a board, we had some really tough conversations on these issues. And I worry that by lumping equity into Safety and Justice, there is perhaps there could be the perception that that’s around putting more funding to things that ultimately help the police. Whether that is actually the intention or not, but I see for example, increased capacity for law enforcement. And if we say that that is also equity, that is not necessarily what we’re doing. But I think that being really conscious of how, how our community may see that is something to be to be mindful of. And then the second thing is is kind of coming back to this idea of equity being a separate bucket versus being in the same. We have the sub buckets. And I don’t know the logistics of how we sort of put things into each bucket. But to Jake’s point where I think he said you I think you said 15% was kind of what you had penciled in and or thought, I wonder if we can think about how we make sure that at least 15% in every one of the other buckets has some element of addressing some something of equity that is not just that bucket. So for example, housing, things that are also address, education levels
1:03:57
or
1:03:59
disability or race, maybe a way to help us think about like, how do we actually wait things within those big buckets and making sure that we’re really focused on not just what’s in that bucket, but how it may sort of hit the intersections? Because I think what we also know is that folks who hit intersections of race and disability, age and disability, that sort of thing. Those are those folks are more vulnerable. And so the more that an agency is looking at hitting some of those intersections that may be more vulnerable, the more likely we would be to fund it.
1:04:36
Thank you, Caitlin. Alberto, and then Graham.
1:04:43
I just want to address so I want to make another point clear. So we we every year have put percentages on what we felt our priorities were. But since I’ve been here, and I know I want to be here for three years.
1:05:03
We never hit those targets.
1:05:07
Because we can’t control when we could control it, but I don’t, I think it would be difficult is we can’t tell agencies, how much to apply for. So for example, or which agencies to apply. So for example, Safety and Justice, even though he said 7%, it tends to fall even below 7%. Because that’s what and that’s how much they ask for. And we’ve never directed and not me, nor should we direct agencies to say, hey, you’re not here, for example, you’re an equity and opportunity agency read that we put 50% of our funding for it, you know, bump up your request. Ah, we’ve never done that. And I’m not sure we ever would so just want to make that point, as well.
1:05:54
Thank you. Let’s see Graham, and then Am
1:05:57
I think he had missed an before sorry. Oh, good.
1:05:59
Sorry, man, I, I thought I had this all organized. My apologies.
1:06:07
Then the people who are new to the board, as I was a couple of years ago, it’s really hard to understand what we’re talking about. As I said before, unless you see the agencies because Caitlin is talking about maybe we’re funding the police. And I do agree that the equity I’m glad that we’re bringing that in, because I feel a little guilty about alchemy, k not getting funding. For I don’t know how many years just because of certain circumstances, that I think maybe if you just flash up the agencies we’re talking about, and if we could just take five minutes for people to look at those. Maybe they would have a better idea of what we’re talking about because it’s not every agency under the sun and every agency doesn’t fit into this bucket or that bucket, although most of them fall into maybe five or six of them.
1:07:10
I think it’s hard to know what we’re talking about if you don’t show the list of who we have funded.
1:07:19
And if you It’s alright if you don’t want to do it. That’s just my opinion.
1:07:24
Alberto, do you have that list available?
1:07:28
Yeah, give me give me give me give me 10 seconds.
1:07:31
Okay. What Go ahead, Graham.
1:07:34
I’m wondering if we can make promote equity an activity in each bucket and wait it as you know, the most heavy activity
1:07:45
irrespective of the bucket.
1:07:49
interesting idea.
1:07:54
Karen
1:07:55
Yeah, I agree with with that, you know, there should be equity equity in each subcategory in each one. There should be a column of that, you know, so it’s included in each one. So Graham, what you’re saying I agree with for sure.
1:08:12
I actually had a
1:08:15
thought of what if we add an equitable to the front of each description exactly equitable Food and Nutrition equitable health and well being equitable education. I and that’s just back to me wanting to name it. So it does not get forgotten, but if we included as a priority activity that serves the same purpose.
1:08:37
I want you got Alberto
1:08:42
unmute.
1:08:43
So what you’re looking at is the council for communication. So these are the these are the agencies that we funded in 2020. And their amounts, and and what they you know, where were they where are they landed as far as the buckets so it Nicole and Steph I see Madeline is wanting to get in the meeting.
1:09:14
just sharing that
1:09:15
honor thank you I couldn’t see cuz Yeah, just yeah.
1:09:21
So these are the agencies we funded here and the buckets of six buckets of these agencies.
1:09:31
And then here are the
1:09:35
and then write this paragraph shows what the
1:09:40
what the percentages were.
1:09:47
Thank you for doing that out there.
1:09:53
And they’ll take me there committed this council did step in and increase that we the board allocated 10,000 and council gave him an extra five from their contingency fund.
1:10:08
So what we’re looking at that first of all, welcome, Madeline, I’m glad you could make it. No, you got a busy schedule. We’re We’re sorry.
1:10:18
Go ahead. Thank you. Thank you. Good to be here.
1:10:22
We’re just really working through this most current needs assessment, how to reconcile that with the priorities we had set previously. And I think we’re kind of at the point of saying the existing buckets as general headers still fit. equity is a purposeful and intentional component that we want to include and Madeline. We’re having a discussion about the best way to do that. I think also Alberto, you raised the possibility that we may not need at least as I interpreted it, that we may not actually have to assign percentage funding goals to the buckets because they haven’t traditionally been met. So in some way, they may not even be serving the purpose they were intended to. Although I think having goals there is some set of guardrails, which can be helpful in discussion. And even in informing funders. So, but I would support the idea that they’re probably not as important as we felt that they were, Karen.
1:11:49
You’re muted.
1:11:51
And I think and we have a little more time to figure out the percentages. So I mean, as always, Call. You know, last year, we once we got the application out the door, we had another meeting to talk about, you know, do we want to at least set aside a percentage of the funding to the particular safety net pillars or the buckets as we’re calling them tonight? So we we still can spend a little more time and deliberate about that. Between the application and and when we go into deliberations?
1:12:29
Right. That’s correct. That the applications were out and we were still having conversation. Correct.
1:12:36
So I think that gives us the opportunity since we’re narrowing into our time window here to make two decisions. One is how what mechanism do we want to use to ensure that equity is represented in all of the funding activities or at least that we’re we’re aware of it intentional purpose. To chiquitos point, we don’t want to be unequivocal inequitable, by applying the filter in a way that’s not productive. But we do want equity to be an important piece of our funding. And so that’s one question. And then I think the second question is really, are we good with the list of activities that the new service assessment needs assessment has generated? And I’ll just quickly say that the city spends a considerable amount of resources on this assessment. There’s a lot of work done. I have to believe that the people who are doing the work are qualified. And in that way, I certainly feel like I’m in no condition to second guess their their outcomes or their determinations. So for myself uncomfortable relying on those experts, Jake
1:14:03
Thank you, Mr. Chair for that clarification, I think it’s very helpful for everyone in helping to hone down on the discussion. So with that said, I’m gonna make one motion that I’m gonna make first and then if it’s okay, I got a second one that we think will be more generally agreed upon, but I just told you this. I want to move that we create a seventh bucket for equity and opportunity. And that’s, that’s my motion, and I’ll seek a second.
1:14:32
Okay, is there a second?
1:14:35
I’ll second it.
1:14:37
And only steps forward on the second. We’ll open it up for discussion. Madeline, would you like some clarification around the that specific issue?
1:14:53
That would be helpful.
1:14:55
So the question really is we have let’s see, we have six buckets that we use to put in our funding priorities or needs, Safety and Justice, education and skill building food and nutrition, health and well being self sufficiency and resilience and housing stability. And as I’m sure you recall, these are the buckets we used in our last few efforts to distribute funding. This question now about how do we make sure that equity is in fact a part of our process? There’s two possible approaches. One is the one that that Jake just put forward, saying let’s add another bucket, which is equity. And then we would I think we would organize the proposed activities to see which ones go into that bucket and that will Allow us to set a specifically allocate funding to activities that focus on equity building. The other train of thought is that equity is part of all of our activities. So, health and well being has an equity component to it and therefore, it should be a specific target that we are weight or there’s some mechanism under each activity that has equity as its goal, but in that way, it’s it’s not specifically targeted and not specifically called out for potential funding. So that is the motion on the table is to have the bucket specifically named and open the possibility to allocate funding to And to include it as a specific goal in our program requests.
1:17:09
Thank you.
1:17:10
You bet.
1:17:13
So, discussion. I’m sorry, I didn’t have the grid view. So if you’re have you, Deanna.
1:17:22
So I think I’m concerned about if we create another bucket if we’re going to eliminate consideration of the equity issue, and the other six buckets,
1:17:35
because I think it needs to be addressed in all of these sub areas. That said, I’m also mindful of the fact that I’m new and I have been through this process before and there are two board members who’ve been on this, who are supporting this motion and clearly know more about this process and how the priorities get sorted out, you know, when you make the sausage so to speak. So I guess I would be curious How people who’ve been through this process in addition to the two that have supported the motion, feel about this addition of this new bucket.
1:18:08
Thank you, Jake. And then Councilmember Christiansen
1:18:12
Well, I Deana specifically mentioned people besides that, besides me, I think so if anyone else on the board wants to speak to it, they’re welcome to this chair. All I would say is that, from my perspective, we sort these agencies based on these big general headers, right, based on these buckets. I don’t think creating a bucket exclusively for equity at opportunity limits our ability in any way to highlight other agencies that fall into the other buckets that have equitable and inclusive and operate and create a great opportunity, right? I don’t think that limits us at all. What I see it doing is quite the opposite. It lifts up agencies that maybe wouldn’t necessarily get funded under a different general heading and gives us the opportunity to fund those agencies because we’re looking at it through an equity and Opportunity lens as opposed to a housing stability, safety adjusted health and well being lens. That’s that’s generally my my thought process on this, that if we really want to make a commitment to equity, we are really going to say as a board that we believe that we need to be doing a better job on this. This is the way that we would do it. So that’ll be my
1:19:21
Thank you. Councilmember Christiansen dem Karen, then Caitlin.
1:19:29
You know, I love you, but
1:19:33
we’re, we’re $14 million dollars short on our budget this year. So we’re going to have to be cutting money everywhere. There’s only so much money every year we have a very, very difficult time. And the more buckets you know, the more we have separated, the more difficult it is to fund to give enough money to be useful to each agency. We want agencies that all provide the lens of equity and opportunity. And not just the lens, but the reality the actual actions of of using this,
1:20:16
which is not a, well,
1:20:20
maybe it’s abstract, but not really. We want this to be a part of every single agency. But when we have, for instance, elcometer, a has always applied for education because that’s what they were told to apply for. We don’t fund that at as greater weight so they don’t they have they don’t get as much money as they think they ought to. They did get funding last year, but it was a whole lot of work for Alberto to and Karen to help them understand why they were not getting the money, and then they got the money and that still wasn’t enough in there. But nobody feels like they’re getting enough. And I just I fear that if we add another little category that really is about something that should be part of every one of these things, that it will just decrease the amount of money. Really, there’s only so much money and we all know how difficult it is at the end to try to maximize how much how effective we can be with the little money that we can give them. We all of us would like to give all these agencies a lot more money and fund the agencies, some of whom don’t get funded, even though they’re doing worthwhile work, but it is not as effective or broad ranging or targeted or whatever.
1:21:57
As
1:22:00
When we have a point system, it doesn’t make the point system, we have to have some way to actually evaluate them. That’s fair and
1:22:10
equitable.
1:22:12
So
1:22:14
I don’t have a vote on this. So that’s just my opinion.
1:22:18
Thank you, Karen. And then Caitlin.
1:22:23
So
1:22:25
I guess, I guess this question would be for Jake. So, you know, one of the things that we should this past, one of the things that Alberto and I will have to do is define what is equity, equity and opportunity. And, and I guess, Jake, if you look at the list of weighted activities, so it’d be the list on the far right of the spreadsheet. As you kind of read through those activities, which of these activities really fall under what you would call that equity and opportunity bucket that you’re proposing. So I’m just kind of curious, I think it would help. Maybe ellenberg done and need to just get an idea of what out of out of these activities that our that came out of the assessment. Which of these would fall under an equity and opportunity rather than one of these other buckets, and we put them in. If you went that far, I don’t know if you went that far. So that would be helpful to know. Go ahead
1:23:38
and check through the activities now, Karen. And what I’ll tell you is, you know, let me go through these again, and then. Sorry about that. I’m going through the opportunities. I’m going through these right now. Once give me Just give me one moment.
1:24:04
Brian, you go on to the next person and come back to you.
1:24:08
Okay, let’s go to Caitlyn.
1:24:11
Um,
1:24:12
so as to what the first thing is that Councilman Christiansen was sort of talking about the need for it to go every place, but one of the example of El comida, where they didn’t fit under education. That seems like a pretty good example of why having a separate category makes sense because they they’re doing things across a number of different buckets, but the thing that ties them together is around equity. And so that example actually made me think we should have a separate bucket. To build on that. I’m kind of curious liberto you had put up a little bit ago that that grid that showed the six buckets and the agencies that were funded, I don’t know how accessible it would be to understand who Wasn’t funded. So I heard queer asterisk wasn’t funded El Camino, they didn’t get what they were funded, I be curious of who didn’t fall into those buckets very well or didn’t get funded. Because they weren’t part of like, sort of these priority areas,
1:25:15
though. So no, nobody, nobody was not funded because of where they fit in their priorities. Right. The primary reason that agencies weren’t funded was the scores. I mean, ultimately, this is a score based system. And it really was about what was scored the agency using your metrics. And also what Karen and I and and ultimately, where somebody might have been hurt was is where, for example, if they were applying under the self sufficiency, but they weren’t doing some of these weighted activities, they didn’t get those extra points for the weight. So that that that hurt people hurt agencies, they weren’t doing that.
1:26:04
So if there were something in each of these buckets, where we gave them essentially weighted extra points for addressing things around areas of equity, because right, like I think everything we’re talking about is equity, like better job opportunities, for example, like that’s really about making sure that everybody has access to that. But if we wanted to highlight addresses, key areas of equity around race or ethnicity, age, disability like or something like that, we could essentially assign extra points in every category for for those for the L commutators. Or the queer asterisks that maybe aren’t hitting the existing sub buckets but might really nail the equity piece. Is that what I’m hearing, sort of logistically of how that could work?
1:26:55
Yes, yeah. It’s important to comment on is that this is one this is One aspect of the scoring it, you know, the other aspect of the scoring is, if you remember on the evaluations is, you know how well they run their agency, you know, is what they’re proposing. So, so the weight is one aspect of the score, but then there’s really the evaluation of those other elements. So all those things that roll together to come up with, you know, did they hit fund or not fund.
1:27:28
So, okay.
1:27:31
Let’s, just quickly to last comments, we will then take a vote on Jake’s motion if it does not pass. I suggest that we quickly have a another motion to resolve the issue. And I also offer everything we do is imperfect. So I don’t think we’re going to have a perfect solution. So I think if it’s agreeable, we’ll we’ll make it work in either case And
1:28:03
I guess if we’re really talking about equity,
1:28:06
sometimes agencies don’t always fit into every category or every bot. And it doesn’t mean that they aren’t doing a good job, it means that they just work in a different way. And it doesn’t mean that they’re not important. And so like, clear asterik, and I’ll call my pay. So I guess I would like in other buckets so that we can really look at that and see if they’re contributing in a way that is not the usual way but might be an equitable way.
1:28:45
Thank you and Jake,
1:28:48
thank you Mr. Chair and just hit the nail on the head in a big bad way. You’ve been looking through the activities that are mentioned the only one that really pops out to me on the list is the racial tension piece. When I think when we’re talking about equity, we’re talking about agencies that support and deal with issues of race, ethnicity, sexual orientation and gender identity. That that’s what we’re talking about when we when we say that right. So again, it’s not just the provider service. It’s not just the measurable, it’s the additional piece that we have had a number of agencies. Last year it really frankly bummed me out that we had agencies who were doing good work in the equity space. We didn’t fund because they didn’t fit under these certain categories they didn’t come in I really believe that the best way to address this is to be wholehearted and gung ho in our support for equity and opportunity and say it very loudly and clearly and make it a key central piece of our deliberation that we support this you know, I I appreciate the Caitlyn mentioned and you know, I love you to do counts. Remember that the outcome of a example is the best example of this agency that did not get funded because they fit under a category that doesn’t work for them, when really what they’re doing is equity and opportunity work. So if we really care about that as an issue, and as a board, we need to make it very clear and create a separate create a separate category for it.
1:30:17
Karen,
1:30:18
and I just have to I just have to disagree with that, Jake. Because that alchemy tank did get funding, they got funding under a category. And so when they got funding under education, they did they were providing adult education. I mean, that was really a service they were providing, and they do so. So I’m just saying that it is it’s that isn’t the reason that they did not get funding because there was
1:30:45
I have several places for them that they fit. Well. And I absolutely understand that. But I think the issue that I had as a member of the Board last year was that the education piece didn’t come close to addressing The full scope of the work that they didn’t even apply under education last year, or whatever, what did they apply?
1:31:06
They applied under us an area that we didn’t even fund. But you know, so but they in 2020, they did not apply under education at all. So I think we ended up under self sufficiency, right?
1:31:19
Yes, exactly right. Yeah, but they use the boulder they click the boulder goal area support to expand access to an ability to culturally appropriate resources, service programs that advance social equity. Later they use even though we technically don’t fund
1:31:34
it, but we still needed to they had an equity area and so they had so boulder had an equity area that el Clemente highlighted it sounds like right. So yeah, that’s okay. That’s what I’m
1:31:45
okay. final comment to Chiquita.
1:31:50
Okay, I have to agree with Deanna Of course. I’m new, she’s new and I totally understand it. So I’m I must be dumb because I’m I’m trying to figure this out you know, Caitlyn, which you guys are just awesome every last one of you are just awesome. I’m just trying to figure out my point of why I think the way I think because I’m listening to me Jake makes me think the total opposite. And where’s when you guys were talking Kaitlyn thought the total opposite. I mean are really know when Councilwoman Polly was talking so anyway, I just want to say what I have to say and then I guess we can decide what we’re going to do. I just feel like we need to exactly what Ann said. But I agree with that. I think the opposite of what she’s saying. We need to have equity in all of these organizations. That’s the whole point. Would they need to embody what equity is in the practices in service Those community 100% it needs to be whatever they do if they’re actually giving, providing employment, it needs to be coming from an equity lens, I don’t think we need to have a separate bucket for equity, and then highlight those particular organizations that really perform equity to the underserved community.
1:33:23
And then
1:33:25
when actually those other organizations are actually providing or looking through an equity lens. It just not may not be as highlighted because we’re looking for those organizations who are like,
1:33:36
oh, equity.
1:33:38
No, I think that we need to make sure each organization are actually providing services for our communities through an equity lens. That should be one of the weighted activities. And that should be one of the things we look at and say, Oh, are they being equitable when they’re providing livable wage, oh, they should, you know, however that should be. That’s just me. Of course, I am new. And I appreciate everything, Jacob and are saying, I’m listening and I’m learning. But from my crazy brain, new brain of understanding and being on this particular board, I just feel like we need to all these organizations need to embody equity period point blank and provide the services through an equity lens.
1:34:30
So, okay, you should keep I keep saying last comment, but I suck at holding boundaries. So Jake, and then Alberto, and I swear that’s gonna be the last one, because
1:34:42
very quickly, Mr. Chair, I agree completely Chiquita and the principle right? So my thought while you were talking was why can’t we do both? But right, why can’t we find a way to lift up the agencies that I’m concerned about? that that that don’t necessarily qualify? For fun, why can’t we find a way to lift those agencies up that that do that equity work specifically, while also ensuring that we wait equity in all of our categories? I don’t see why those are why we wouldn’t be able to do both of those things. And if staff or anyone else has a thought on that, I would be curious about it.
1:35:20
Okay, final comment for reals goes to Roberto.
1:35:27
So I want to I want to speak to both what Chiquita said and what Jake just said. So okay, so a couple of things. One, could very easily just adopt boulders equity goal area, and an area that we fund as well, and it could fit under self sufficiency. And then we could add a question in the application around how each program will be delivered in an equitable manner. To the community, and then add that as part of your evaluation. Right now your evaluation looks at boards and the Board of Directors, but it doesn’t ask the question around how it can be done. We don’t ask me to explain how they deliver equitable services. We could to address this we could ask the agencies, so they tell us their program description and then we ask another question. How would you do how will you ensure that these services will be delivered in an equitable manner to all of the Longmont residents or all of the community so that that may be a way to address it? Without not without needing to add another bucket, just ensuring that equity is a part of every single goal or every single application.
1:36:54
Okay, let’s put it to a vote.
1:36:58
So, Nick Cole, could you read back the motion just so we all have a clear idea of what it is.
1:37:10
Okay? Hey, Ellie Berto, would you mind stop screen sharing, it’s easier for me to see I’m sorry till I can count the votes. Thank you. I just want to make sure it gets recorded properly. Okay, so the original motion from Jake let me scroll up bear with me guys. So the original motion from Jake was quite simple. Thank you BOARD MEMBER marsing was just a motion to create a seventh bucket for equity and opportunity. And then we had all that discussion around it. So that was actually the only motion that I heard.
1:37:45
Thank you. Okay, all in favor of the motion to create a seventh bucket focused on equity please signify by saying what know please signify by raising your hand
1:38:08
Got it, Nicole. Okay, All those opposed, please raise your hand.
1:38:20
Thank you and any abstaining?
1:38:29
You’re still on mute, Nicole.
1:38:32
I didn’t get Madeline Madeline Can you turn on your camera?
1:38:35
Yeah, I think we have a tie.
1:38:37
We do.
1:38:40
shouldn’t have told Madeline that now’s the time.
1:38:44
I’m abstaining. You’re abstaining. Okay.
1:38:51
Well, I don’t even know what we do in the event of a tie.
1:38:55
fails, according to Robert
1:38:58
fails. Okay. Thank you. Okay, I would like to move that we direct staff to I’m sorry, go ahead, Graham.
1:39:09
I would like to motion we take Alberto’s suggestion and adopt the other two ignored priority area that the city of Boulder has concerning equity and then to add a weighted question to the applicants concerning their providing services in an equitable manner.
1:39:35
Is there a second?
1:39:38
Deana seconds?
1:39:41
Okay, all in favor, please signify by raising your hand.
1:39:54
Okay, I got it.
1:39:56
Any opposed, please raise your hand
1:40:02
And any abstentions? Please raise your hand.
1:40:06
Madeline and Jake.
1:40:15
Okay, so that Motion passes. I think we’ve got some direction going forward. Caitlin.
1:40:23
Yes, Mr. Chair, I was. So for the direction to staff on that one. I think the idea of asking how you will deliver these services equitably is really broad and doesn’t notice like, I think there’s, I think we might want to be a little more specific around that question of how will you address issues of, you know, around race, gender, sexual identities, some some broad categories, because delivering this equitably seems very broad in a country Like, I wouldn’t expect that every single one of our agencies is going to deliver it equitably. So I want I’d like them to identify what inequities maybe in some areas are addressing or something along those lines.
1:41:14
Thank you, Karen.
1:41:18
So, you know, I think that we have
1:41:23
we have gone through some of the
1:41:29
Gare government. I don’t remember what the what the acronym stands for, but we’ve gone through some equity training that also has an assessment tool with it, that that we are asked to use in assessing all of the programs that we offer as a city government. That takes us through some specifics, Caitlin, to your point, and I believe we can access that tool to help us come up with a question that isn’t so broad in general Read that it’s worthless. So. So I think we I think we have a tool that can really help with that.
1:42:07
That’s great. Thank you. So I believe we’ve done our work in terms of what we were asked to decide, Jake.
1:42:18
I hate to keep taking things up, Mr. Chair, but I had a question and followed potentially by emotion that I wanted to circle back to on a separate topic. Regarding employment support. Alberta, you mentioned we don’t currently school what what was the it’s not pay or we don’t award based on employment support, we don’t find those agencies. Thank you. Um, talk to me a little bit about that.
1:42:43
So, for example, so employment supports a broad thing, right? So for example, child care could be considered employment support, work support, and we do fund that. You’re talking about, um, internships like that, because workforce did apply. At first funding for an internship, we didn’t fund that we haven’t funded that in the past. In that sense, we haven’t funded work support, we fund childcare we, we do fund education. So training we would fund. It’s more around the specific finding people jobs that we don’t have not funded. Is that correct?
1:43:25
Yeah, I mean, I think part of it is if there’s another governmental entity that is really that’s their role in doing that primarily and getting funds for that, then, then we didn’t, then we didn’t really step in to try to supplant funding for that. But we did entertain, I think to Alberto’s point, we did entertain an application, I think it was two years ago from workforce Boulder County, and we ended up not it didn’t score very highly primarily because there was a high cost associated with with with that program, and A low number of people that would be beneficiaries. super important. But I think that the the advisory board said for that amount of funding that that they would be looking at maybe, you know, more people benefiting from services then then a small number of people, that was a large cost.
1:44:28
Jake.
1:44:29
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I’m gonna move. In fact, I do move that we include employment support under that we fund employment support more direct employment support under self sufficiency and resilience, specifically,
1:44:43
and I would seek a second.
1:44:46
Is there a second? I’ll second. Okay. Thank you, Caitlin. I do want to point out under self sufficiency and resilience, there is the increasing access to better job opportunities. is one of the activities that I think follows the the new needs assessment recommendation of proactively supporting employment. Jake, were you wanting the maybe that language of proactively support employment to be an activity then?
1:45:21
I suppose so. Mr. Chair, I think what what my motion is saying is the board is saying loudly and clearly that this funding cycle is specifically based on our needs assessment, considering it was one of the top priorities of our needs assessment that we are intending to fund direct employment support, and that is the policy of this board. That’s what I tax.
1:45:40
Okay. Thank you. Any other discussion?
1:45:44
Okay, all in favor, please signify by raising your hand.
1:45:52
Any opposed? Oh, sorry,
1:45:55
Nicola. I got it. You’re good.
1:45:57
Okay. Any opposed, please raise your hand. And
1:46:02
any abstentions? Please raise your hand. And, and Madeline. This has been one of the more interesting and spread out kind of voting sessions that we have are usually much more agreeable.
1:46:25
Okay, so that
1:46:30
so that’s great. We got that. Can you, Albert or, or Karen, tell us what’s going to happen with this with what happened tonight
1:46:46
so I guess the department and Karen can speak to other. For me my takeaway from tonight is I need to go look at that that gear equity assessment tool and use it to draft a question to add to the to the application and then also look at the board evaluation that you all have and ensure that I have a question for you that matches that question. Yeah, I get that done pretty quickly. Because we want to get this application out by the 14th or so I forget exactly the but pretty next week or so. And so I had to talk to Boulder to change the advocate, change the application. And then I need to change the instructions to add the boulder
1:47:34
the boulder
1:47:38
go, buddy thing to our list of approved goal area. Okay. Okay, that’s my takeaway.
1:47:47
So I think the other thing so maybe this is I’ll throw this back to to Brian and the advisory board. So um, so we have Our regular meeting would be in a week. Right? And so if, if, what might if what makes sense, we didn’t know whether we should whether we thought we needed a meeting or not. But as I’m thinking about this, it might be helpful that what we would do at the at the meeting on next week, the 10th is that we would bring back kind of our revised process based on the direction we got now. So that you can you can take a look at how we know how we’ve addressed that. The questions around equity and in just in just really look at the whole application, just to make sure before we send it out, that it captures the essence and you know, the intent of the vote tonight, so it probably would make sense for us to go ahead and, and meet unless you say no, you don’t want to you trust what we do, but it might be good just to have another look at
1:49:02
Yeah, I would encourage us to meet. Even if you know, people, if we don’t have a full board, I think still, there’s just the work. The The schedule is really compressed. So I think as much as we can go into it knowing exactly what we’re doing, it’ll make it easier down the road for those.
1:49:22
And I think, you know, so what that will mean is that
1:49:26
it might be the day before or the day of the, you know, of the meeting that you’ll get your you’ll get the application documents, so we’ll have to work on a little bit so you might not get it. We’ll try to get it to you a day in advance, but probably not much more than that. That’s all right.
1:49:44
No, that’s great. I don’t read it anyway. So
1:49:49
now
1:49:51
I read it. So the other question I have is, Alberto in regards to the grouping of activity Do you want feedback from the board on that or not? I,
1:50:07
I guess only if you only if the board and I actually only as the board disagrees what I did, basically, if the board is
1:50:14
fine with where I have put things, then let’s just move forward. But if the board has strong feelings, then they need to let me know. Is it okay? If I ask any board members who have a strong feeling about whether an activity belongs in a different bucket that they reach directly out to you?
1:50:35
And I can bring it back next week, Tuesday, if somebody wants to say, I really want this over here, we can tag. But my understanding from this point is we’re keeping all the 28 we’re going to keep them those buckets. We’re going to add, you know, add a question the application we’re going to get and it’s going to be a part of what we about what we do is going to be fundamental about what how we how we score and how we evaluate these application. Yep.
1:51:03
Sounds like gravy to me.
1:51:08
Okay, I do not have the agenda in front of me. But I believe that that does conclude our business for this meeting, but
1:51:15
there is an other business.
1:51:17
I know. Yes. Thank you. Is there any other business?
1:51:25
Karen
1:51:27
not and not in other business, but just just an update. So on Tuesday night, the city manager did release the budget memo. What’s in the proposed 2021 budget for the city of Longmont and so, and so I, I will send you a link to that so you can see that, but there’s So the good news is I think is probably indicated I mean, it said it’s a fairly, it’s a fairly flat budget. But but the but there is being proposed additional money being recommended for for human service agency funding. So another $100,000 is being proposed. That that doesn’t bring up to, we had requested an amount to bring us up to 2.7% of the general fund revenues, that and I’ll give you the exact it didn’t bring it up at 2.7. I think we’re up to 2.57. But in the budget environment in which we are right now, I think it’s um, I felt I felt good that there was that investment, or at least that recommendation to increase those those dollars by as much as they felt that they could increase those. So there will be some increase It didn’t take us all the way up to 2.7. But, but it’s around 2.57, I believe. So I just wanted to give you that update. Thank you.
1:53:08
I think that’s really great news. And thank you, Councilmember Christiansen for your advocacy for this funding. And it’s I agree that in this environment, it’s, you know, any extra i think is is, it’s great that we get it, and also in this environment, it’s absolutely essential. So it’s all very timely. Thank you. Okay, then if there’s no other business, is there a motion to adjourn? Deana raised her hand relatively quickly. Second.
1:53:45
Second. Thank you.
1:53:47
And with that, then we will adjourn the meeting. Thanks, everybody. Thanks for joining us, Madeline.
1:53:55
Absolutely. See ya.
1:53:59
That was great, everybody. Thank you
Transcribed by https://otter.ai