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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2017-03-16 Housing & Human Services MIN Ashland Housing and Human Services Commission Special Meeting Minutes March 16, 2017 CALL TO ORDER Chair Boettiger called the meeting to order at 5:00 pm in the Siskiyou Room at the Community Development and Engineering Offices located at 51 Winburn Way, Ashland OR 97520. Commissioners Present: Council Liaison Rich Rohde Joshua Boettiger SOU Liaison Tom Gunderson Megan Mercier, absent Sharon Harris Heidi Parker Staff Present: Linda Reid, Housing Specialist Commissioners Absent: Gina DuQuenne Sue Crader Michelle Linley APPROVAL OF MINUTES N/A. PUBLIC FORUM N/A SPECIAL MEETING TO FINALIZE QUESTIONS AND FORMAT FOR THE SS GRANT AND CDBG GRANT MEETING The Housing and Human Services Commission scheduled this additional meeting to finalize the questions for the Social Service Grant applicants and to finalize the timeframe and format for the SS Grant and CDBG Grant applicant’s presentations at the regular Housing and Human Services Commission Meeting scheduled for March 23, 2017. Commissioner Harris clarified that she would not participate in the SS Grant recommendation process after considering the direction of the City Attorney regarding Commission Harris’ role as the President of the Board of a non-profit that is an applicant for the SS Grant funds. Harris did clarify that she would like to be in the room during the meeting, Harris also asked the other Commissioners if she could share the questions that she generated in reading the applications, since she was fully intending to participate in the process and had done quite a lot of work in reading and considering the applications prior to receiving the direction from the City Attorney regarding her not participating. Harris suggested that if the other commissioners had that same or similar questions to the ones she generated then perhaps they could take them forward to the next meeting, though obviously if they did not share those questions they could disregard them. The Commissioners present felt that Harris sharing her questions with them would not be a conflict. Harris went over the questions she had in reading the applications, some of the questions were similar to questions raised by the other commissioners. REVIEW QUESTIONS FOR THE SOCIAL SERVIE GRANT APPLICATION The Commissioners discussed the way in which to structure the meeting and what questions to ask the applicants. Reid reminded them that the applicants would already be answering the six general questions which the commission had agreed upon at the prior month’s meeting and that due to the number of presenters the commissioners could only a lot approximately 5 minutes per applicant to get through all of the presenters in the time allotted. The commissioners discussed a variety of scenarios for accomplishing the goals of accommodating the applicant’s presentations, allowing time for some additional follow up questions beyond those already provided to the applicants, and allowing enough time the commissioner to deliberate on recommendations for both grant funds. Reid suggested that the commissioners fill out the preliminary allocations for Social Service grant funds and send them to her in advance of the meeting so that she could populate the spreadsheet so the commissioners could use the average of everyone’s suggested allocation as a starting point for the final recommendation discussion. Reid pointed out that in the prior cycle’s process, inputting each commissioner’s suggested allocation took up a lot of time, and that the average that the spreadsheet provides was very helpful in making a final funding determination. The commissioners agreed to fill out their allocations and get them to Reid. Reid told the commission that she did not feel that the CDBG item needed as much time on the agenda as it has been given in prior years for a couple of reasons: one was that both Maslow and St. Vincent De Paul have applied for both Social Service and CDBG funding for the same activities, and as such staff has asked those two applicants to only do one presentation for both funding sources. Reid also stated that the commission is very familiar with the activities undertaken by those two groups and consequently, felt that their presentations could be streamlined. The other reason was that there were two applications for Capital Improvement projects, only one of which was actually an eligible activity. ADJOURNMENT The meeting was adjourned at 6:30 p.m. Respectfully submitted by Linda Reid