And we are right at 5.30. I'd like to thank everybody for being here, for attending this as we get ready
to start the CDBG 2026 Funding Round tonight. Of course, we're gonna hear some presentations from all
the applicant agencies, but before we do that, I'd like to take roll call. So if we can go around and
have the committee members give your name, get this started.
start with, or well, actually we'll start here. Steve Bishop. I'm Janet Welch. Paul Jonesons.
Courtney Daly. Terri Anderson. Carl Greiser. And Terri Anderson. Thank you all. Just introducing this,
like I said, we'll be hearing presentations this evening for
the 11 applicant agencies that we have this year. It is anticipated that we will probably have around
$117,000 to allocate for the CDBG 2026 funding year. Unfortunately, only 15% of the CDBG funding that
we receive can actually go towards social services. And moving into the
kind of overview of it. CDBG is used for the benefit of low to moderate income individuals who are at
80% or less of the area median income as determined for the Bloomington metro area as established by
HUD yearly. Tonight, we will be hearing, like I said, 11 different presentations. Each will be no longer
than five minutes. I will be keeping time. Each agency will be given a
kind of nudge with one minute left to go, just noting that their time is close to being over. And I
will ask that with the open seat that we possibly have up here as you're presenting, if you can come
up here just to get closer to our microphone, the owls, so that way those online can hear as well, and
for reporting purposes that we're able to get you there. But I will start the timer whenever you begin
your presentation.
We'll move on from there. The order of presenters is also here on the agenda that has been printed out
and is available. But from here, I would like to let our committee chair, Ms. Janet Welch, take over
and we can begin the presentations. Okay. Well, let's get started. Is someone here from Beacon House?
This is Amy Kendall. I'm from Beacon.
Yes, you have five minutes. Okay. My name is Amy Kendall and I'm the development director at Beacon.
Thank you so much for having me here tonight.
Beacon is a solutions-driven anti-poverty organization dedicated to aiding and empowering people experiencing
extreme poverty, especially hunger and homelessness. Our six programs address issues ranging from the
first crisis that threatens homelessness to finding housing solutions for people who have experienced
homelessness for years. We are the largest nonprofit housing provider in Monroe County.
and in 2024, we housed or prevented homelessness for 683 people. We are respectfully requesting $25,000
in funding to support the operations of Beacon's Overnight Shelter, Friends Place. Friends Place is
a 40-bed emergency shelter for people experiencing homelessness. Last year, we served 269 people for
14,210 bed nights.
Perhaps the most important thing about the shelter is that it is the largest emergency shelter for women
in our community. Approximately 90% of our guests are currently women. Other vital things about Friends
Place are that we prioritize Monroe County residents, ensuring that a resident can always receive a
bed. We also prioritize people fleeing domestic violence.
Although we are the third nonprofit to run it all together, Friends Place is the longest running emergency
shelter for people experiencing homelessness in Bloomington. It's also the only local year round emergency
shelter for adults without a religious mission other than the care of its guests.
Friends Place provides casework to its guests to help them find permanent homes. We believe in finding
permanent solutions to homelessness, and our average stay last year was approximately 60 days, while
over 50% exited to permanent housing. We also are active with the Heading Home collaboration, and as
recommended, a housing first shelter, meaning our first priority is to help people find and stabilize
in permanent housing as quickly as possible.
In addition, we were a contributor to the Housing Action Plan to end street homelessness, and we fully
support this plan. Homelessness is consistently rated as one of the biggest challenges for our city.
In fact, on any given night in Bloomington, 305 people are experiencing homelessness, 63% of which are
adults without children in their care.
Given the unique support the service provides to our community, CDBG social services funding for Friends
Place is an essential fit. As to partial funding, we recognize that partial funding is the common practice
for this grant, that every dollar below full funding has to then go into other avenues to make up that
money, leading us to put more time and money into fundraising.
And if that becomes not possible, we would have to look at reducing hours of the shelter or case management
support for housing. Friends Place is an important resource in our community that helps people get back
on their feet. One of our former Friends Place clients, who is now housed, she's in school, and she
is stably employed, said about this program.
I just have so much gratitude. It helped me as a stepping stone to be able to get where I am. I grew
a lot as a person and it enriched my life. I learned a lot about myself. I would just like to say thank
you. And from me, I appreciate your time and consideration and now would like to open it up for questions.
I have a question.
Is the grant designed to replace funding from another source that is going away or that you're not expecting
to receive or is it just new funding for this program? We've received this funding in the past and it
is part of our hoped friends place budget, normal budget. It's not replacing funding that has gone away.
There's one question, let me say, I won't say this one time, not to each person presenting tonight.
Thank you for your organization services and thank you for your time to present and your organization's
work to put a proposal together. So I'll say that one time and now repeat myself, but appreciate it
all. One question about the
seeking permanent housing for those of them friends, house residents. And your numbers look good in
the proposal. You vet your benchmarks, apparently, of what I can see and all that. I'm curious what
you learn about follow-up, about people who are successfully transitioned to permanent housing. How
does that last? And what have you learned from whatever day you have about that and how you help people,
new folks who are coming in, seek that transition successfully?
Yeah, that's a great question. I would say that we know that going through certain channels, working
with certain partnerships work. So whether that be helping someone get Section 8 vouchers or getting
them in touch with permanent supportive housing or rapid rehousing, we know that these are programs
that work and we've seen success in those. So we've got
established partners, rapid rehousing, a permanent supportive housing being two of Beacon's other programs.
We have these relationships where we find that based on casework and how the caseworkers get to know
each individual client, understanding that everyone's unique, we get to know their specific situation
and determine which path and which assistance is most suitable for them.
Are there any other questions? If you have anything else you wish to say, I don't know how much time
we have left. If any members of the public are also here, we also provide an opportunity for public
comment. Okay, are there members of the public here that would like to give public comment at this time?
Seeing none.
we're able to move on. Yes. Uh, the next part next of applicants on the list is the community kitchen.
You want me to go to the beer cup? All right. My name is Vicki. I'm the executive director of community
kitchen. We appreciate the opportunity to be here this evening. We are the largest provider of free
meals in the community.
We provided 302,900 meals and snacks last year to folks in our community. 58% of those folks were children,
9% were seniors and 11% were experiencing homelessness at some point the previous six months. So really
our focus groups are the most vulnerable in our community while our doors are open six days a week to
anyone in need. So we have our Roger Street location, excuse me, it's a sit down facility.
our express location, which is carry out. And then we have a mobile food truck that's out six days a
week. Three of those days is here in the city neighborhoods that folks have more trouble accessing our
services. And then we have outreach programs for children in particular and seniors folks who are chronically
ill. We feed friends place every day and have our, yeah, have a couple of other programs that we provide as well.
You know, what we're seeing right now is, of course, already some increases that we're being told by
clients are because their SNAP benefits aren't coming. And so, you know, we're sort of bracing for that.
You know, the community's been really responsive so far with a lot of extra food for us, which has been
great. I know Julia and Jake have been working on getting some additional food through the food bank
into the community so that we can meet those needs as they come in.
But that's really what our focus has been right now. We've received CDBG funding for years and appreciate
that support. We don't get a whole lot of government support. And so all of that that we are able to
acquire, we really appreciate it. It's a part of our funding model. I could talk all day or I could
stop talking now and find out if you have questions. That's a lot of people.
It is a lot of meals. So what is the cost per meals when we break it down? So our cost last year per
meal cash cost was $3.69. Yeah. And it was honestly, it stayed under or right at $2 for years. And then,
you know, food prices started shooting up when gas prices did several years ago and then just not gone
back down. And so we've seen those costs continue to increase. Were you going to say something, medical?
I thought you had a question. Sorry, I thought your finger was up. Oh, no, I will add one if no one
else has. Go ahead. Well, you've been in existence for a while. Yes. 43rd. Yes. Yeah. So congratulations.
Of course, I know small matter survival. Right. And so I looked at some of the data from some of what
you've learned, the benchmarks and all. In addition to some immediate things like SNAP and such, what
are the trends? What do you see?
Just I'm curious what, where you sit, where your organization sits, find responsibility and purposes.
Yeah. Relating particularly to the grant and the application and all that. Yeah. It's only a big picture
of the universe, but. So, you know, I've been at the kitchen for 21 years, so I could tell you all kinds
of things that I've seen. But one of the things that
Uh, some of the things that have been most sort of impactful big trends that we've seen is that when
we moved, uh, 14 years ago, one of the things that we had been seeing for a couple of years and saw
definitely for five or six years after that was more families with children coming to our facility.
Um, and so our current facility that we've been in 14 years, you know, people still called our new facility.
Um, it has a family dining room for folks.
who come as a family to be able to sit at a round table instead of a banquet table with strangers. The
thing that we've seen obviously over the last six or eight years is more folks with mental health issues
and substance abuse issues and just folks who are trying to manage that. That's a multifaceted complicated
issue for obviously each individual person. We're just aware of the fact that folks have to eat every day and
You know, we want to, for a lot of folks, we are really sort of part of their best plan for survival
and managing other things. We do see a good number of seniors in our dining room every night. And for
those folks in particular, they're on fixed income and we are part of their best plan. They can save
some money by eating with us and get a healthier meal, a more robust meal too, and then be able to have
more money for utility bills or
medications or whatever they need. I'm not sure that completely answered your question, but that's what
I'm throwing out there. What you have to say is what's the answer. Okay. I know there's a bus stop here.
Right in front. Yeah. Right near it. Is that how long people get here is using the bus? It's been a
handful of years since we asked people how they got there. There are a good number of people who come
on foot. A bunch of them come on the bus, some of them drive, and some of them bike.
And there's a good mix of all of those. But yeah, we get a significant number of folks who write to
us. Anything else? Well, thank you for your time. Thank you. Do you need to ask the public?
All my colleagues. Yeah, I'm just going to ask you those questions. Thank you. Thank you.
Our next presentation comes from the Boys and Girls Club. Thanks for letting me slide in. I was coming
from downstairs with the physical improvement presentation, so happy to be up here now. Thank you all
for your work. Thanks for doing this work. I know it's a lot to look at and to read about and to sift
through, but we really appreciate it. We appreciate the funding provided by CBPG over the years to the clubs.
I'm just telling you a little bit about our organization with Boys and Girls Clubs of Bloomington. Been
around 70 years as of next year.
We're serving our highest number of kids ever. So we have about 700 kids a day in our buildings, more
kids than ever before that we have seen, and we're continuing to grow. Usually we plateau about this
time of year, but our attendance just keeps going up and up and up. We still have kids registering and
coming to us. So the need is there, and funding like this helps us to meet that need. So we charge $20
a year to be a member of the club. They can come every single day for 20 bucks.
We rely on community donations to make up the difference. It certainly does not cost us $20 a year to
provide that programming. We have a lot of parents that do donate, so if they can give more, families
do cover more of the true cost of their kids. For example, my kids go and I cover the cost of my kids
and two other ones, right? There are a lot of families that do that, but majority of our families really
can't do a whole lot more than that. And so that's really who we're there to serve. Our mission says
we're there to serve the kids who need us most. And those are the kids who need us most. And so we charge
the $20 a year
If families have five or six kids and that feels like a burden to them, we also let them make payments
and those kinds of things as well. We'll scholarship them if we need to and cover at least half the
cost. We want them to have some skin in the game, but not much, some of them. And so we're able to do
that again because of funding from CDBG. The Crestmont Club specifically is what we're asking for funding
for tonight. That is our highest need club. So over 80% of our kids that come to the Crestmont Club
are on free and reduced lunch.
About 68% of them are from single parent households or non-parent households. They're living with a
relative or in a foster family, things like that. We provide snacks, thanks to Community Kitchen and
Vujo's Food Bank partnerships, and we provide meals to the Cresmont Club as well, and then a safe place
to be until seven o'clock at night.
We bus the kids from the club or from school to the club. So the parents don't have to worry about how
their kid is gonna get to the club after school. And then we're open all summer long. So parents still
work in the summer, even though kids are off. And so from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. kids are at the club all
summer long as well. And so funding from CDBG helps us to support staffing at that location to keep
kids safe. We have to keep adult to kid ratios appropriate as according to the law of the state of Indiana.
And so really staffing and facilities are our biggest costs.
downstairs talking about facilities and now I'm upstairs talking about staffing. So that's really the
request for today and thank you so much for hearing it and I'd love to take any questions. Yeah. How
many locations are there? We have four locations. We have three in Monroe County and two in Bloomington.
So one at the Lincoln Street location and then the Ferguson Prescott location is in the next neighborhood.
Just a membership is interesting for all organizations. I think that by, I just read, I haven't read
for scoring yet. I've read from the beginning. I think, I think it's something like 536 members. I think
it was there. There was a benchmark or goal for the 25, 26 school year to increase by 10%. I'm less
interested in exactly where you are.
What are you learning about membership? Why did people join? And how does that relate to your grant
application or application response? Yeah, and that's a great question. I think people join because
it's the most affordable child care for after school care in town. I think we provide high quality programs.
We built trust in the community. I think people trust the Boys and Girls Club and they feel like their
kids are safe after school, as opposed to having them go home alone.
If you could guess, what's the time of day where there's the highest juvenile crime in the community?
You have to guess.
Right after school. Oh, right after school. Yeah. So after school until it gets dark. So we love just
keeping kids occupied, right? I mean, there's kids get in trouble for lots of reasons. Most of the time
they're just bored, honestly, and looking for something to do. And so we engage with kids. We give them
leadership opportunities. We help them to feel like they have a purpose and they're having fun after
school. They're learning. They sometimes don't know it. I was tutoring a kid the other day and he goes,
we didn't even learn anything today. And I was like, ah, that's a good tutoring session. He didn't even
know I was teaching him today. We were playing games.
and he was learning math and he didn't even realize it. So that's, I think parents love that, that we
are doing things with their kids that keep them engaged and it's 20 bucks a year. I hear parents all
the time like, oh, it's a no brainer. Of course I can send my kid for 20 bucks a year somewhere instead
of sending them home by themselves. So I think that's really what drives membership for us is, and word
of mouth is our biggest reason people sign up is they know another family or their kids talked about
it or their friends go to the club or they trust a family that told them about it.
Yeah. Great question. We'd love to serve more. We have space in that building to serve more kids. So
we could fit more kids in. Yeah. I noticed that you have 500 members in the Crestmont area, but you
typically only have about 100 of them at the club each day. Correct. Yeah. Is there some
Some ways to increase that or yeah, you have any plans for trying to increase that. Yeah, it's a good
question. Are we it's a drop in program. So they the nature of it is that they can come when they need
to. We talk about regularly attending members and we're always trying to get that regularly attending
member number up a little bit that percentage of people who come every day.
versus our registered members. Some of that's kids play sports after school. They have other stuff going
on. Their parents are home early on those Tuesdays and Thursdays or whatever it is. But yeah, I think
we're always looking at ways to get kids engaged. A lot of times it's what programs are running that
day. So if they like, maybe they're taking violin lessons at the club and violin lessons are Monday,
Wednesday, Friday. So they come Monday, Wednesday, Friday. So what can we do to draw them in on Tuesdays
and Thursdays? And so it's kind of playing with that mix of programming and trying to understand what
gets kids to want
be there especially the older they get when parents feel more comfortable leaving them at home then
we really have to entice them to want to come because they really need us then too. They don't know
it as much but they really do need us then too so that's a good question. We're always working on it.
I know you said that the hours in the summertime is 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Do you notice an increase or decrease
during the summertime? Yeah we have less kids in the summer but they come more often.
So it's more regularly coming in the summertime. But there are kids that go on vacation, or they go
to grandma and grandpa's, or they're staying with friends. I mean, kids are kind of all over the place
in the summer. Maybe they're doing a summer camp, something like that. So fewer kids, about 500 kids
a day in the summer, as opposed to 700 kids a day in the school year. But they come more regularly in
the summer. Yeah, the ones that come most days. It's a good question.
You said you're experiencing a lot of growth in your membership that you typically don't see at this
time of the year. Are you seeing a shift in the demographics of people who are joining as members with
increased growth, or are you just seeing a larger population of the same groups of people? I think it's,
you know, I don't know, honestly. That's a good, I think, thing for us to look at, a data point for
us to look at. I think it's just more people understanding that the club is for them.
Anecdotally, that's what I think is that it's not just for the kids who need it most, but it's for all
kids it's available to. And so I think post pandemic, people are coming sort of a little bit away from
working at home as much and they're going back into offices and those kinds of things. And maybe they're
realizing like, oh, I can send my kids to the club. So that's anecdotally my answer, but it would be
a good data point to look at.
It's interesting to know if maybe it's a utilization of certain demographic in the segments of Bloomington
that was utilized for certain reasons or and it's obviously there's a lot of data points right now at
the point to why you have increased membership. So it would just be interesting to know what
what's kind of driving that and what kind of services those people utilize in relative to your tip for
all of like, for sure. That would be, I think, I always think the lower, the less money you spend on
us, if I will say that, we need to drive our costs down, not up, because they need groceries, they need
to pay utilities, they need to pay rent, they need to pay bus fare. Like we don't want them to be paying
us for those services. So that's why we have community support to make that happen. And I think that
we provide that relief in that way to help free up resources for them to spend on other things. Yeah.
Are there any comments from the public that want to be made at this time? Thank you very much.
Thank you. I appreciate some of you. The next one on the list is courage to change sober living. Hi.
My name is Marilyn Grimes, and I'm the executive director and co-founder of Courage to Change Sober
Living. Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today and to share the mission and work of our
organization. At Courage to Change Sober Living, we are dedicated to supporting individuals on their
journey to recovery and empowering them to build healthy, fulfilling lives.
When courage to change began, it was after I had gone through the struggles of substance misuse. I was
working at New Leaf New Life and working with people coming out of jail. The main problem that I could
identify was those being released from jail that had nowhere to go. Our goal is to give people a safe
place to live and to learn new habits and live with others with the same goal. We are asking for your
support in granting
us money for the salaries of our three case managers. As a level two certified recovery resident, we
are required to have case managers. We also know that they are vital to the work we do. Funding from
CDBG will help to pay part of their salaries. One of our main goals is to facilitate those that have
struggled with substance misuse and are unhoused in our community.
These are individuals who are involved in the legal system or who have gone to rehab facility. Most
of our potential clients have nowhere to reside after leaving jail or rehab. Their substance misuse
has created many obstacles to housing. One of the most important aspects of successful recovery is to
have a place to live.
At Courage to Change, we provide a safe place to live with oversight by our case managers. Our case
managers work 25 hours a week, but are on call to our clients 24-7. They play an important role in the
lives of those residing in our houses. Our case managers do weekly house meetings with
our clients to go over their concerns and help them in setting goals. They also do drug screening and
oversee the guidelines of our houses. These include being good neighbors, doing chores necessary to
keep the house in good order. They oversee the curfews and monitor the 12 step meetings our clients
must attend. Without case managers, our clients would not have the direction needed to stay on target
to meet their goals.
Courage to change also impacts the housing issue. And we also impact the recidivism rate. Our clients
have an 85% rate of not returning to the legal system. And we also, we let our clients stay for a year.
And if it gets to the point we're at a year, if we can't find housing for them,
and they've been looking and they can't find anything, we will lengthen that time so that they don't
just, our goal is to get them into another place so that they can have success. And so we let them stay
with us throughout that time of being able to find a place to live. So that's courage to change. Thank
you for your time. If you have questions, happy to answer them.
How many houses do you currently have? We have five houses. And how many people are in each house? Well,
the most we have is eight, two house. Our clients share bedrooms, and the reason we do that is because
we try to set a community, and isolation is part of substance misuse. And so we don't want isolation, so we
put them together. We have one house that has five, but all four other houses can hold eight people
and we have, we always have enough room. We're under the guidelines of the state recovery works. And
so they do, and they have guidelines that are really stricter than hand as far as the amount of room
they have and how we set it up, you know, for our clients. So it's, it's comfortable and safe.
Do the case managers live in the houses or do they come to the houses to do the case management? They
do not live in the houses. They do go to the houses. They're in communication with the clients on the
regular. My women's case manager, they keep a group Facebook chat going all the time. So they're always
communicating. But they do not live there.
I heard you say that 12-step programs are mandatory. I'm sorry? 12-step programs are mandatory for your
residents? Yes, they are. When you're in the legal system, if you're on probation or parole, a lot of
times they'll put those stipulations on them. But for us, Bloomington's got a really strong recovery
community.
And 12-step meetings is a part of that. And so we feel that it's important that they attend. So they're
required three meetings a week. OK, three meetings a week. Uh-huh. All right, thank you. How many people
are usually assigned to one case manager?
Oh, we have, okay, so our women's case manager has 13 clients and we have one men's case manager that
right now has 16 and then our other one has eight. We'd like to get one more house so that he can have 16.
We do have cameras in our houses in the common areas. So we have curfews and we also have. It's called
one step and it's an app where you actually have to. Basically it has a GPS on it, not that we want
to locate him all the time, but we want to know when they came in and because we do have curfews. And
then also you can monitor that they've been at the 12 step meeting because all of our meetings are on
And they can check in at a meeting and then check out when they leave. So we, we do have a good amount
of oversight. You noticed you mentioned that your case managers are on call 24 7.
Does this mean that they work extra hours that they don't actually get paid for, or is that included
in their 24 hours, 25 hours? Yeah, I'm the executive director, so my phone is always 24 seven. So we
try and get them to, if something really is going on that I can help them, then they can call me. But
for the other part,
When people are first in recovery, they need that little extra help. So the hours, I would say 25 hours
does cover that because it's not a constant 20, you know, people are not reaching out to them constantly
during that time. But they do know that if they need something, there's someone that is there for them.
any comments or questions from the public? Okay, thank you very much. Thank you very much for letting
us put the grant in. Bye. And the next applicant on the list is Hoosier Hills Blue Bay.
I'm Julio Alonso. I'm executive director of Vigilance Food Bank. I'm here with our associate director,
Jake Bruner. And we appreciate the opportunity to speak with you tonight in your consideration and have
support of the Food Bank's HCDBG funding. We are in the business of collecting and distributing food.
We collect and distribute about 5.8 million pounds of food each year and distribute that through direct
service programs.
and through a network of about 84 partner agencies in six counties, including six of the 10 other agencies
on the list tonight and work very closely with them. What we are seeking support for from CDBG is our
oldest program and essentially the genesis of what we are, our local food collection and distribution route.
We started as and are in essence a food rescue organization. We collect food from places that have excess
that might otherwise be wasted. And we get that food out through those systems, through our direct service
programs and our agencies to people in need. This program works with about a dozen donors on a regular
basis. Our driver goes out every day.
and collects food from primarily retailers, and then takes that food and distributes it to five agencies
within the city of Wilmington. Some of that food also makes its way to other agencies like Pantry 279
that are located in the city, but serve a lot of city residents.
Our goal really is to support the agencies that we work with so that they can have food for their programs
and they can then focus on their programs. It's kind of like what they're doing and we do with direct
service for the individuals that are being served.
taking food off the table sort of as an issue so that they have that and they can then focus on other
aspects of their life and have enough money for medicine and childcare and rent and things like that.
Being sufficiently fed enough to be healthy and to be able to be active and
successful in the community. The food that we collect from this kind of process to rescue is supplemented
in a number of ways. We also receive food through USDA commodity programs from the federal government.
We do community food drives where community food drives are done for us. We grow food in our garden
and garden program and we purchase food from local farmers, from
from wholesalers and from partnerships with Feeding America, the National Food Bank Network. So essentially
pull this food from every corner that we can get and get it out to those agencies and our neighbors
through our direct service programs. We've been around
for a little over 40 years, and again, have appreciated the support that you've shown us. It is a very
difficult time for us right now. Hopefully, this funding will not impact the shutdown, because the shutdown
won't last into the next twisting year when this one starts, but the shutdown is having an enormous
impact on the supplemental food assistance network right now, so to challenging time.
With that, I would be more than happy to answer any questions you might have. I don't have a question,
but when I went through your proposal, I was, to be honest with you, astounded by the cost per unit
of service. I want to tell everybody what that is.
I think it was pretty well. Yeah, sure. I think we indicated 19 cents as our cost per unit of service
here. I just couldn't, when I saw that, I was just, really, I have to compliment you. That is just amazing.
Well, thank you. But I mean, that is a testament to
to the kind of organization we are and the support that we receive from the community, a great deal
of the food that comes in is donated food. So that really helps us to keep the cost down, even though
purchasing directly has become a significantly more important source of food for us. In the last year,
what has that cost gone up? And obviously we all know the grocery food is getting more expensive. So
how much has your cost gone up?
than the last kind of purchasing food? That's difficult to say because our purchasing food is really
driven by the amount of support we can raise to do that. So the costs for the items that we buy is definitely
increased.
Unfortunately, I don't think I can give you a specific percentage or number, but all food is costing
more, I can definitely tell you that, even when you're buying it in volume like we are. Thank you. What
effects have you noticed that the shutdown is having on the organization? Aside from not getting any
sleep for the last two and a half weeks, it's having a big impact. We are already seeing significant
significantly higher numbers of folks at our mobile pantries and hearing from our partner agencies that
they're seeing a lot of increased traffic. I believe the fifth, which I think was Tuesday, maybe was
the first day that in Indiana SNAP beneficiaries did not receive their benefits. But even in the week
or so prior to that, because of all the
the press that this has gotten, people were preparing for the fact that they will be getting their benefits.
So they're getting out to food pantries ahead of that so that they can get food into their houses and
stored up. We do one of the distributions we do is at Limestone Square here in Bloomington. We did that
one last night and it served 148,
households compared to 90 households the month prior. So we're already seeing the numbers increase
significantly. Thank you for the work.
It seems to me you're not just going to pick up and do delivery business. It's collaboration across
the board. I'm curious. You get a lot of moving parts. But I'm curious, in terms of the program for
which funds are being sought, how are these funds supportive of the relationship, Bill and my partner?
You're there. How do you say it? To make it pure, most effectively. They absolutely are supportive of that.
Collaboration is the nature of what we do. We, you know, we do some direct service programs like that
mobile pantry.
that I was just talking about, but the majority of the work we do is providing food to those partner
agencies, to food pantries, to kitchens, to shelters, to boys and girls clubs, giving them the food
that they need, not 100% of it, obviously, but as much as we possibly can so that they don't have to
worry about that as much and can focus on the programs that they're doing, whether it's providing meals
or providing youth programming or whatever the case might be.
Everything we do really is collaborative. And our goal is always to bring in more food to support these
agencies and to support them with the type of food that they need to the best degree that we can. That's
where purchasing becomes more important because with donations, obviously, we're very grateful for whatever
we get, but you can't control nutritional content or quality or quantity just based on donations. And
that's what purchasing is important because it allows us that kind of
of flexibility. Hi, Michelle Gilprest here. First of all, thank you for the work that you're doing.
I know food banks across the country are struggling and for, you know, even though it's hard for you
locally, it's great to see the community come around you as an organization and provide the resources
My question is more on the impact. I think it's very important that we continue to sustain this particular
program for what it does for the community. What impact has the loss of funding? Not necessarily the
shutdown, but a lot of food banks depend on federal funding to be able to provide the resources and
services that it provides. How dependent has your organization been
and what financial impact has that had? Sure. Well, last year, for example, about 25% of the food that
we distributed overall came through federal government sources. It was federal commodities. We saw a
significant cut to that earlier this year when one of those programs, the Commodity Credit Corporation,
program was terminated, that food and funding was coming through us through the TFAP program, which
is sort of the bread and butter, the Emergency Food Assistance Program. That's where most of the commodities
that were even distributed out to agencies comes through. So we lost about 9% of our food when that
program ended. In terms of funding,
Most of those programs come with some administrative funding. We haven't really yet determined the impact
of that. Any funding that came with CCC is gone, of course, but everything is up in the air right now
with the shutdown until the federal budget gets through. And so what we're facing right now is that
For that program, for example, food that's been ordered and paid for through November will still be
delivered, so we're still receiving shipments of that, but they're not making any more purchases going
forward. If the shutdown goes on much longer, we're going to run into lags due to supply chain issues.
Those orders have to be placed well in advance to get them out to the states and then out to the food banks.
we could be seeing a more significant impact of that later in December and in January. Thank you. Who's
the member on zoom that I should introduce? Yes, I'm sorry that she had joined in a little late, but
this is a show. Bill Christ. She is listed on the agenda as one of the members, but yeah, she actually had a
another meeting prior to this day's joining us. Thank you, Bernie. Yes, thank you. Thank you, Cody.
I apologize. I had a finance meeting right before here and I didn't want to miss this meeting. Were
there any comments or questions from the public? I guess we can move on then. Thank you very much. Thank you.
And the next presentation will be made by Middleway House. Good evening. My name is Chloe Timmons and
I am the grants manager at Middleway House. We are local to Bloomington and serve survivors of domestic
violence, sexual assault, and human trafficking within our community.
We are home to the New Inks Emergency Shelter, which houses survivors who are actively fleeing a situation
of violence, stalking, harassment, or human trafficking, as well as any dependent children a survivor
may have. This service operates 24-7, 365 days a year. We're operational on holidays, weekends, or other
non-traditional working hours. We are the only organization of its kind within Bloomington serving survivors.
In 2024, we served 125 adults and 103 children with a total of 5,233 shelter nights. Through CDBG social
services funding, we will serve extremely low, low income or low to moderate income families who are
considered homeless due to domestic violence. Most individuals served are residents of the city of Bloomington.
Funding will support the staffing of part time resident advocates within the emergency shelter. These
advocates ensure that our shelter is properly staffed during those non-business hours. We wouldn't be
able to operate without them.
Our part-time resident advocates are responsible for conducting shelter requests and intakes during
those evening hours, meeting with any residents who can't meet during daytime hours, sharing referral
resources, working to resolve any conflicts within shelter, maintaining client records, and providing
on-call services on a rotating basis as necessary. Our part-time RAs also provide crucial emotional
support during evening hours, and we see a lot of survivors who need that sort of crisis intervention
during the night or during the evening times where they might feel most vulnerable when the world goes
a little quiet.
The goal of our project is to increase residents' knowledge on community resources available to them
and allow them to exit to safe, secure housing away from an abuser. We also do at least two safety planning
sessions with all of our adult survivors to ensure that they remain safe after exiting our program.
So again, CDBG Social Services allows us to continue staffing those essential roles and making sure
that survivors in our community have a safe listening ear to go to when they need it. Thank you.
You mentioned a new emergency shelter. Could you give us a little more information about that? The name
of our emergency shelter is New Wings. We've been operating it in some capacity for over 50 years, but
that's just the title. Any other questions?
Any comments from the public? I guess we're ready to move on. Thank you very much. Thank you. And next
on the agenda is my sister's closet. We have someone here from my sister's closet, either on Zoom or
I guess not here in the room.
They were also physical improvements applicant as well, so there could be a possibility that they still
be downstairs. If they're not here. You want to call them at the end or? We could move them to the end
of the agenda and see if they arrive late. So we will move on to new hope for families.
Seven to three, all five. E. Hi, hello all. My name's Chase. I am the operations director at New Book
for Families. Thank you guys for serving on this committee. I know CNBG has a lot of technical details
and the plan is a big document. So I'm really grateful for y'all parsing through all those applications
and all those things to make the best use of these funds. As you guys know,
Luton has a lack of affordable housing and a lack of affordable childcare. And put together, families
with children, especially children birth to five struggle to find the decent affordable childcare that
would enable them to work enough hours to pay their rent, meet their other basic needs. Today in Monroe
County, anywhere between 30 and 40% of the individuals who are experiencing homelessness, that means
they're sleeping outside or in shelter, are members of a family with children.
You're not going to see them outside. You're not going to see them at the park because they're at home.
They're at Middle Way. They're safe and in shelter. But nevertheless, it's a big proportion of people
who are sleeping in shelter outside. And the majority of those people are ages six and younger. You're
most likely to experience homelessness. You're most vulnerable to it in your first year of age. A family might
sleep outside of the shelter. I think those statistics speak to the way the two issues are intertwined.
Families need childcare so they can work, keep their homes. When childcare is missing, we see people
lose the other two that lose out on income and household. So as many of you are also aware, recent state
funding cuts have cut the CCDF voucher program. It used to be called the Casey voucher that makes childcare
income-based. It helps working low-income families afford childcare.
They lowered, the way it was cut was they didn't stop, they had stopped issuing any new vouchers. So
no one's going to get income-based childcare for the next two years or indefinitely. But they also lowered
the rate that they'll reimburse. So everybody who has it right now is now going to have to pay more
out of pocket. They stopped it for 2026, but they also stopped it for 2027 also? Yeah. Okay. New guidance
has just come out, so it was forestalled. So that means that
the people who are currently enrolled at our early learning center are exposed to more costs, and they're
exposed to losing that voucher and being able to get it back. We serve, I'm sorry, let me get back to
that. Early learning Indiana survey reported that in response to that, 19% of childcare providers have
closed at least one classroom already because of lack of enrollment. 12% are at serious risk of just
closing altogether, mainly because low income families with these vouchers
are just disenrolling because they can't afford the extra bit. Conversely, New Hope is trying to keep
families enrolled. I can think of, we reserve half of our enrollment for kids who are affected
by homelessness. Close to 70% of our enrollment are using the CCDF voucher. And we have about 53 kids
enrolled there. In my son's two-year-old classroom, one family stayed in the shelter two years ago.
They've got two years sober. Their two-year-old was there. She's thriving. They're thriving in,
In employment, another one is a mom who had gone through the shelter, blood or abuse or her two year
old son is also there enrolled. She just finished her CNA.
Uh, both of those, uh, all the children there are meeting or exceeding developmental milestones. Whereas
by rights, people who experienced these big, dramatic events there, the children have really adverse
experiences. So we're trying to reverse that and hang on to these families and preserve their vouchers.
So that's what this, uh, that's what this application is all about trying to make sure that we don't
have to raise our prices because we don't have as much revenue coming in from that voucher and make
sure that families don't have to pay more. Even if we don't pay, raise our price. So I just wanted.
Just a couple of details from the application with the remainder of my times. I know that you guys have
taken close to one minute. Units of service, the total program budget is about a million dollars to
run the Early Learning Center. The CCDF shortfall is a little over $149,000, about 15% loss that we're
expecting. So our unit of service, we think with the $25,000 we can
give about 1,800 weeks of childcare, and that would be $79.69 per week. So it's not the total cost of
care. We fundraise above and beyond what families pay in tuition. It's $385 per week, but we will be
claiming $79.69 because we're claiming that gap, not the total cost. I had a question about that, John.
Why is there such a difference between the $79 and the $385? What costs are included in the $325? That's
what I wanted to know. $385 is the cost per student of the total budget. So all the staff, all the overhead
mentors and things like that, the classroom rate is lower than that. So we fundraise that extra bit.
And because we want to keep prices low for middle income families too,
And the CCDF voucher, sorry, it's a little technical, but I think we'll get that. CCDF gets really close
to the full cost, close to the room rate. I mean, the families pay that little bit in the middle. They
pay a little bit based on their income. And we're saying $79 per week is what they're now exposed to
every week because their reimbursement rate's lost. So it's a little technical, we're right in the middle
of that sandwich where that's what they would be paying. But we're just gonna make them pay.
Some of the other expenses of your program though, your overall program beyond the child care, is that
included in the 395? No, that is our early learning centers program budget. We have extra staff and
we have extra, we have extra staff. We have some retention bonuses and things like that built into the
budget because a lot of the children that we serve have been through a lot of traumatic events. So they
present with, it's difficult for those children to make transitions. People come in and out because
they're moving to the shelter. So we have extra staff and we have some extra supportive measures and
things that costs more to provide services. So we fundraise that extra bit. Yeah, I have a few questions.
What is the average length of stay? At the shelter? Yes. Families who went to the shelter.
would otherwise sleep outside in the vehicle. No children that we are aware of sleep outside in the
vehicle in our community, in our 610 region, and so a lot of different partnerships, including the city.
If they come, they get childcare, which is what this is helping to underwrite, then the parents get
income and they bear that income on the place to live as fast as they can. Families stay in shelter
for about 90 days on average. 82% leave to release in their night.
Is that an age-stating goal to do early living center? There seems to be a lot of competition for housing,
for placement. So how is that coordinated in the city of Wellington? For families to find housing? Yeah.
There are three full-time housing specialists of families who do the crisis of homelessness, and then
they follow up with them for three years after they leave.
So families who are, they can remain enrolled with the Early Learning Center because we want them to
keep that income and keep their housing. Yeah. Do you notice any statistics that like, you might not
know them off the top of your head, but about how many people usually stay like not homeless after they
leave your shelter? We have an extremely low recidivism rate and it's because we follow up with families
and make sure they stay safe. Statewide,
families who are exiting the shelter, only about 32% of them are leaving to a lease of their name. Only
about 32% of people leave a homeless shelter to housing. Most leave to another shelter, to couch surf,
to do something other than have a built house. So that because we have the early learning center there
really undergirds people's ability to get all the way over having to return to an abuser, having to
return to an uninhabitable place
and then they stay enrolled. The other point before we get too far is that in our statement of financial
position, I wanted to bring up that we do have a credit union certified deposit account that has $400,000
in it, and that is word revenue from two
three-year grants that are already, they gave us the money at the fund. So we do have a lot of cash
in the bank, but that is allocated toward other activities already, especially following up with families
for two years. And we have a
All of our assistive, an early learning center has a lead teacher and they're supported by assistant
teachers. All of our assistant teachers are in a two-year associate's degree through Ivy Tech, called
our Jumpstart program. They're going to become master teachers, help with the shortage of teachers and
childcare. So that's what those two, that's what that big amount there is on the books. So those were
the two things that the details, financial details are going to highlight for you.
I have one more question. You said that they follow up with them three years after. How closely is that
followed? The case managers will call you once a month, every month for three years. They will do a
survey with you three to four times a year, and you'll get a $100 incentive to take the survey. It's
about childhood well-being and medicine. They also have a reentry prevention fund that's in pay bills,
help people get their car battery fixed or whatever, do things that are related to helping them maintain
their medicine.
What percentage of people stay in the county instead? The huge majority of people get housing in Monarch
County. Sometimes I can think of like six people who have lived in like Ellisville or Bedford, but our
housing specialists know about our community and they know how to help people get established. Also
the huge majority of people
who experience homelessness are having a housing crisis that originated in Montero County.
We don't see, in families, we're seeing people on their first night of homelessness. They still have
custody of a child. It means that they have not been sleeping outside of that child for years. So a
lot of us is tied to the local. And then that's especially true for the early learning center. People
do not stay enrolled if they move to bed because they've got
Why would they drop off their care if they live far away? So everybody at the early learning center
is in the limits. And I think there's only two or three dams that are not living in this limits or will
be affected by this limit. Kenny, are there any comments from the public?
Thank you very much and thank you. We will do number nine, new life. Is someone here from my sister's
closet? Yeah, we deferred you to the end. So I guess we're going to hear from Newly's new life now.
Good evening. Thank you for the opportunity. My name is Heather Scott Land and I am a reentry case manager
and coordinator for New Leaf New Life. New Leaf New Life is an organization serving residents in Monroe
County since 2005. Our service center primarily on community members who are currently or formally impacted
by the legal system.
New Leaf New Life facilitates weekly programs inside the Monroe County Correctional Center with a Read
to Me program in partnership with the Monroe County Public Library, as well as reentry planning classes.
And these classes build relationships with New Leaf staff while collaborating strategies for success
after release. At our transitional center, we offer case management by our certified peer recovery
credentialed staff through our reentry mentorship program.
In 2011, Perry Township trustees donated office space at 1010 South Walnut Street where we provide the
reentry support services. These services include but are not limited to obtaining a copy of the birth
certificate, photo ID, assistance with getting HIP insurance and SNAP benefits, help getting a cell
phone, employment referrals and partnership with Goodwill Industries. We help with treatment and sober
living placement and referrals.
We can provide assistance with fees for the first two weeks if our mentees don't have the resources
to pay the initial bed fees. This prevents many of these vulnerable community members from being unhoused
or returning to unsafe, unsupportive environments that led to their arrest in the first place. We give
them an opportunity for change.
They're met with compassion by our staff who has personal lived experience with incarceration, substance
misuse, or have been impacted within their immediate families. They're given hygiene items, clothing,
bus tickets, encouragement, and hope. New Leaf New Life is an organization that is available to any
person during their involvement with the legal system or throughout their journey back into the community.
New Leaf New Life has requested funding to support staffing costs so we can continue to provide these
vital services to our community. This will provide approximately 3,000 hours of mentorship. The 2024
State of Indiana Department of Corrections recidivism rate was 32.6% in 2024. At the end of this October,
the recidivism rate for our mentees was 13.27%,
and the mentees that were given treatment, sober living, and housing referrals were tracked at just
under 2%. Our staff provides a unique service that served nearly 500 new mentees last year, and the
numbers are climbing. Last month, we served 55 new mentees and 189 were returning. We found that the
relationships with the staff and the services that we provide are truly making a difference in our community.
Thank you for the opportunity to allow us to speak about what we're doing. And I can take any questions
you have. You mentioned that you help anyone, you don't turn anyone away, it sounds like. Is there a
prioritization for those living in Bloomington? So we serve people who are coming from incarceration
in Monroe County. Now, if someone calls from Owen County and they were incarcerated there,
They are getting our services or they are being referred into Monroe County. That's very few and far
between. We also go and we speak at DOC facilities, but it's just for District 5, which are paroled
to Monroe County. So I guess my question would be is if you have people that are incarcerated in Monroe
County, but they are not from here, they just got caught
are put in the legal system, so now they are part of that legal system. Once they're released, are they
able to utilize their services or are they fielded out to kind of a home area for them for similar services?
So what we do is we coordinate with the other 91 counties and we help get them services, a warm transfer
over to where they're going, connect them with resources there, help them find housing,
We also have gotten funding through another grant to provide transportation through Greyhound or Uber
Business to be able to get them home to their families or to their home base so they can have resources
or sober living there. We don't just drop people, but we do like to get them back to where they're going
to be most successful.
I know that you said you usually connect them with SNAP benefits. How has that been affected with all
the current things going on in the current administration? We are so fortunate to be in the same building
as the Township Trustee, which has a food pantry that's connected two doors down to where we are. We
also distribute Finding Food in Monroe County, which coordinates our participants with warm meals,
Hoosier Hills Food Bank, Pantry 279, churches, anybody who is distributing food, we can let them know
when, where, and how. We also collaborate with agencies for pop-up things, for warm meals, for warming
shelters. We have our ear to the pulse of things that are happening and moving and adapting, pivoting
with it to try to best serve people and can keep them fed.
I'm curious about just relating particularly to what the question is here. How is your thinking at the
organization about partnerships change, if it has over time, to be part of those partners for the agency
to make your work successful?
I think our collaboration and partnerships are growing. I mean, last month we looked and we had referrals
from 20 different agencies, whether it was another social service agency, whether it was Sober Living,
the justice system. I mean, we get several referrals from the public defender, from the correctional
center, from problem solving court. And so we're continuing to nurture these relationships. Our assistant
director sits on the committee
of the downtown resource officers, which collaborate every single Wednesday to talk about people who
are unhoused in our community, people that may need treatment. I mean, we have our basis of people coming
from reentry, but we are also prevention. If someone is unhoused, we're working with different agencies
to get someone into treatment or to get someone housed or to try to help someone so it doesn't lead
to incarceration.
I wanted to do a follow-up. You speak about the county, but in the city of Bloomington itself, are the
services being provided to Bloomington? In the city or the county? Yes. So we are in the city and we
provide within the city,
We talk about Monroe County because it is the Monroe County Correctional Center. But we are based out
of Bloomington, the city of Bloomington. Do you keep track of whether people are residents of Bloomington,
residents of the county, or what? So we keep track of which township. So if they're Perry Township,
Bloomington Township, if they are county, or if they are city. So yes, we do track that.
Are there any comments or questions from the public? Okay, thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you.
All right, we will now go back to number seven, my sister's closet. We need to come up here closer to
the aisle so that we can be sure that you're
presentation is picked up on the floor. I've invited Marcy Hibbert with me. If I could get another seat
for her, that'd be wonderful. Thank you so much.
Hello, my name is Sandy Keller. I'm the Executive Director of Founder of My Sister's Closet, and with
me is Marcy Hibbert, our Vice President of Development. We are here tonight to discuss our financial
wellness programming, programming up to financial success. My Sister's Closet helps women coming to
us from all kinds of different situations of low-income status and at-risk status. The majority of the
women what you're serving are living in single
parent households. Many of them have one to five children. Some of their times their children are in
a foster care and they're trying to get them back because they're in a situation of homelessness. Other
times they are trying to move past addictions and other issues so that they can be able to have their
kids back with them again. The women that we work with are regularly coming from situations where
They have not had any kind of education on financial wellness at all. For a lot of them, they might
have a debit card, but they have never balanced a checking account, for example, even though they own
one. They don't have savings accounts. They don't have checking accounts. They're wanting to be able
to find employment. That is the biggest reason why women come to my sister's closet. They are wanting
to become self-sufficient, and we are in an age
where you know you are judged if you do not have a good credit report people search those things out.
A lot of the women that we work with have been abused by payday loan companies. They have other people
in their life that put their hand out and ask for their paycheck after they've earned it so that as
soon as they have money, somebody else has decided that that is theirs. One of the bigger things that
we do with our programming is teaching them how to have the self-confidence and the ownership over your
own finances so that you learn a new language with one of the words being
home. We want these women to feel like that they are independent so that they have the ability to pay
for things when they come up, not everybody else's emergencies, but to be able to actually have a goal
written down of things that they would like to achieve. Maybe fixing a tire on a car that's not running
anymore because they need to replace it. Maybe they're wanting a safer deposit so that they can move
into their own apartment.
There are lots of different things that we work with them to help them meet with job success. Our program
is structured with mentors and advocates like Marcy, who was in the banking industry at JC Bank who
oversees our program. And the idea is that we help them feel like that they are not alone.
Not knowing how to manage your money is a very, very isolating thing. If you feel like you've got a
team, if you've got people that are hoping you win, then you understand that this is not as hard as
you thought it was. So we work with them to understand how to create a budget.
and we identify one thing on that budget and we have a match program that for every $50 you save, we
will toss in $10 towards that goal. We don't give it to you until the goal is achieved. The average
goal that we set, we want to try to make achievable of about $300 so that when you are getting to that
goal, we are writing the check with you and we are making sure that it's going to the car mechanic.
It's going to the landlords that you have that
So that you are getting you are starting to see that success. We don't want someone to just achieve
one goal. We want to identify several small goals. If we can get you to stick with us so that you become
a habitual saver.
then we are going to possibly change the way that you see the power of your own dollar and your own
ability to be able to meet with life success. We know that from national statistics, if we are able
to help women learn how to save families, learn how to save, then we are able to help them achieve other
goals. For example, holding down a job and being able to be consistent in other things in their life
so that they are seen as credible, reliable,
respectable, professional job applicants so that we increase their employability and so that we help
them to become known by the banking industry so that they feel like they've got people supporting them
on the other side. We are respectfully asking for $25,000 to support this program. So with the financial
ask, with the work shop, workbooks and tools,
with some paid mentoring help from staff so that we can make sure that we have somebody consistently
working with them. We are reaching out to other organizations as well to invite their clients to be
part of this. If I understand a second, when they're saving up for a goal, they save up $50 and then
you give them 10 or do they have to basically save up five, six,
of their entire goal and you both spill and pay. No, no, because it's a little bit at a time.
You know, think about it. If you have somebody cheering you on a little bit at a time, then you're excited
about the next $50. If you have to save up $300, but you have to get to $251, most of them will not
be able to achieve that. It's just too hard. This makes it more achievable. We have success built in
along the way where we are rewarding them. They graduate with a certificate of success and we kind of
throw a celebration
when you achieve one of these goals, but we want them to feel like that they have a team behind them.
And then it is a huge, huge celebration. And so how is their savings verified? Do they just show you
the bank account? Or do they give that money to you to hold onto? No, we do not hold onto their money.
We are working with banking partners who are verifying that they're meeting their goals. And to a certain
extent, it's an honor system. But they can show us electronically that they are saving for things. Part
of what we are wanting to do is make sure that if there are some fees associated with the institution,
that they are wanting to work with, whether it's a monthly fee of $350 to hold down a checking account
until they reach a certain amount or whatever, that we are helping to pay for those things so that we
eliminate the barriers that otherwise would have made them feel like this was too hard. But the biggest
thing is overcoming that fear of walking into a vein.
And helping them to feel like they've got somebody that is interested in them. So I'm working with the
banking partners that we have. They understand our situation of what you find to accomplish and they're
all in on that. They want people to succeed also in the banking and the money saving. So it's kind of
a good partnership. And if we're successful, they build a credit score.
And they are seen, you know, differently from these banking partners who can write referrals for them
and references saying that they can vouch for them for other things that they want to do. What kind
of program materials, what resources? Well, we use a lot of different things. A lot of it is from the FDIC.
Money Smart Program. I did a lot of that when I was in banking. I did a lot of training with people,
both adults and children with the FDIC Money Smart Program. So I have a lot of experience in that and
I like to bring the best parts of, like David MC is a good one. Now, given that, this programming is
tailored to the specific
clients that we are serving. We're not going to talk to them about their 501.
We're not going to talk to them about their investment portfolio of stocks and the assets that they
have right now and their retirement plan. They don't have these things. We are doing this in a way that
is palatable and relatable for them. And taking a cue from Randy Powell with the business placement
office, he incorporated a lot of comical cartoons into his programming for the business placement office.
which we use for other programming, My Sister's Closet. So the workbooks have cartoons that talk, that
make you look at yourself and laugh a little bit. So this isn't quite so hard. Yeah, I guess a follow-up
to that. So you mentioned some financial partners that you have, banking institutions. Do they help
with placement of accounts? Because for folks that typically have, you know, down-share credit, things
like that, oftentimes they can't get bank accounts. So is that part of the placement? It is, actually.
because we know that these people probably have left banks previously for no good reason. We'll work
with them and the bank will help them see what needs to be taken care of. They can go and take care
of those issues before we can get them the bank account. But that is a goal that they can do. That's
a goal they can say, I need to pay off this bank before
said they will open an account for me, maybe one that has a fee on it because of their experience. And
so you work with them on things like check systems or other issues that come up. Exactly, exactly. Because
we understand that a lot of our clients have gotten themselves into those problems and haven't been
in the banking industry like you understand. They have not been educated.
There has not been education for these people and it is daunting to them and it's scary and the last
thing they want to do is walk in a bank and have them be told no. They need a partner they need support
they need us.
to help them with that and that's why we have some great banking programs. Is this a relatively new
program or is it has been in place for quite a while? It's relatively new. It's funny. Sandy, I had
been working with Sandy volunteering while I was at the bank and she came to me and said,
we need to help these people with this financial understanding. And I said, yes, let's do it. So that's
how we kind of came about talking about how can we do this? How can we help? What, from a banking perspective
and from a nonprofit perspective, how can we bring this together to help these clients? So it is relatively,
our program is relatively new. We've done the rounding up and the banking partnerships.
We've always taught financial illness, but we were not seeing the success that we wanted to see. This
meets the needs that were unidentified before or identified before, but we did not know how to address
them. And so it's just a perfect partnership and it's so positive.
You know, the clients coming through this really like this. It's not scary. And when someone tells you
that they've done something that they didn't think they could do before, like put a deposit down on
an apartment or actually a deposit down on a house, I mean, that is absolutely amazing. And so one of
our clients carries her budget with her everywhere she goes. And when she feels like she's tempted,
she picks it up and she looks at it for her guidance as she calls it her conscience.
Oh, sorry. No, no, go ahead, Terry. You're about to say something. No, go ahead. Yeah, shut up. Sorry,
real quick. First of all, thank you for the presentation. I real quick want to share a quick story,
like not a story, more of a situation. I helped this lady and
it was interesting to see her predicament and it was a horrible thing. But she and I sat down and kind
of went over her budget and she understood now she has a plan in place. So sometimes when we look at
these many programs that a lot of people utilize is out of necessity. So the question is, how can this
be a program that could prevent the need and dependency on those programs?
And so teaching financial management and how to budget and how to save, if you're invested in it and
if you take money that you've earned, however you earned it, and you set it aside, it'll help you to
realize that what you were taught or what you have been exposed to is not normal. It's not normal to
be dependent. And so I appreciate you. Quick question. Since this is a new program, how do you plan
to sustain it? That was really why I raised my hand.
That's a very good question. Well, I mean success meets with success. We feel that our banking partners
when they see these women succeed one after another, they're more empowered themselves to be able to
help fund us because it is exactly how they identify themselves in helping the community and giving back.
banking advocates and mentors that are helping to the clients, every time somebody meets with success,
it's a good thing for everybody. It's very positive for the community and for the community. So we believe
that we will just continue to receive grants for this because of that. Thank you. Make sure she's done.
My question picks up on that. I'm also interested in peer learning, peer support, helping each other,
whether that's within Sister's Closet cohorts or whether it's outside to divide them into peers. I'm
curious what you have to share or what you'd like to share relating to the peer support and learning
related to this work, especially as it relates to your grant proposal. There's a lot of it out there.
Peer, as far as
previous clients, talking to other clients, encouraging them and letting them believe that this is possible
and it'll work. We absolutely do have clients coming back to do that. As far as advocates and mentors
who work with my sister's closet in the different lanes that they work with, for example, financial
wellness, we have
We just have this incredible team that feels very, very empowered every time we're able to help someone
win. And we just really believe that everybody should have the chance to win. Can I do one follow-up?
Sorry, I think this is it. In terms of
Helping the individuals who are connected with you through this program, particularly, how they get
the support they need beyond those you provide is part of the education, if you will, and the support
that you provide beyond some narrow piece about the bank and the financial reward, in effect, by encouraging,
but how they get support from others in their networks
Right. That's the last thing. When you get assigned as a mentor or an advocate, that's not a one and
done thing that lasts like six weeks. We want you to stay connected with that word forever. We really
do. One of our advocates, Denise Shockley, who's an accountant here in town, has stayed connected with
one of the women that we have served since
She was enrolled in the Success Institute Programming in 2016. And she calls her up and asks her if
she should go to the right or to the left when she's making a decision. And she has stayed with her
the whole time to insert her and help her make good decisions. I don't know if that's what you're asking
about. What you have shared would be relevant. Yeah, but we want these women to feel like that this
is their network.
that this is their safe place. They can always come back to my sister's closet no matter what. We want
them to feel like this is their team. We also want them to feel like when they start to get that relationship
with the bank, being a banker, that was what I was about. And I have helped a lot of women, a lot of
people that came in that didn't know what they were doing. So that is a huge part of the customers coming in
and building that relationship with the bank because they're not just there to take your deposit and
give you your money. No, they're there to say, how are you doing? Great job. You're making a deposit
today because we understand, the banks understand if they are relationship banks that this is only going
to help them in the future. Last question. How are you made from success in this program? We were measured
success five.
First and foremost, women achieving, or men, it's open to men and women. We mostly serve women with
our other programming. This is for both. And whether or not they have actually been able to go through
the program and create a budget, and if they have been able to reach one of their primary goals of actually
making it to one of their savings goals. And then if, you know, with customer satisfaction, surveys
on how they felt something was working, whether or not we need to tweet it to the left,
or to the right to improve it, whether or not we are able to have more clients refer to other pairs
of their own because it helped them so that they can refer somebody else into it. I mean, the biggest
thing is to help, you know, our clients reach some of those larger goals and to appear that they have
moved away from predatory lending companies, like payment loan companies, and that they have established
a banking relationship. Those are a lot of different questions that we ask, but they're all pretty important
because this is a lifestyle change. There's a very specific set of goals and actions, and you kind of
have to stick with it. And along the way, we want to see that you're succeeding in this.
Okay, are we about out of time, I think? Yeah, we have two more presentations still. I'm sorry, yes.
Thank you very much. The questions can take longer, that's fine. We don't have any public at the moment,
so I don't think there's any public comments.
Okay, is there somebody from pan free 279? You have somebody on one. Hello, can you all hear me? Yes,
we can hear you can't see though. Yeah, apparently, um, the laptop I grabbed today is one that does
not have a working webcam. So I apologize for that.
Would you like to go ahead and introduce yourself? Sure. My name is Tracy. I'm the assistant director
for Pantry 279. Pantry 279 is a low barrier food pantry located in Bloomington, Indiana. We were started
by a Girl Scout troop 10 years ago. We just celebrated our 10th birthday on November 2nd. I'm gonna
try and make this short and sweet. I'm gonna throw out
some numbers just so you guys can get a better understanding about how food insecurity within Bloomington
has really increased throughout this year. I know Julio spoke a little bit on the current issues that
are going on with SNAP and with the cuts to the TFAT program, which have
really hit our pantry hard. We have seen a huge increase just in the last three days that we were open
for distribution. But I want to give you some numbers that reflect like a January through October increase.
In January of this year, we served 2,092 households, which was 6,863 individuals.
In October, we fed 3,245 households, which was 10,784 individuals. We are one of the only food pantries
in Southern Indiana that offers grocery delivery to our clients. They have to be completely homebound
to receive this service, but 73% of our deliveries are to the elderly,
83 percent of all of our deliveries are done within the city limits of Bloomington. In January, we fed
469 households with our delivery program. In October, we fed 883 households with our delivery program.
That's almost doubled just from January. We are a staff of 12 employees.
Only two of us are full time, which means everybody else works 20 hours or less. I am currently working
85 hours a week, you know, most of which is volunteer hours. And I know that our executive director,
Cindy Chavez, probably is the only person who puts in more time than me. We run three special programs
throughout the year. One is our summer kids food program, which helps supplement
food to children who are on the free and reduced lunch program while they're out for the summer. That
way they're not skipping any meals. In 2024, we fed 3,446 children with that program. We run a Thanksgiving
kindness box program where our clients can pick up or get delivered a box that has everything you will
need to prepare your Thanksgiving dinner. In 2024, we fed
20,374 people with that program. And then we also do a Christmas assistance program called ELF. In 2024,
we provided Christmas gifts to 2,302 children through that program. In 2024, we fed 117,433 individuals, 80%
of those people were from Monroe County and 95% of that 80% were residents of the city of Bloomington.
According to feeding. I'm sorry. Sorry, one minute remaining. Okay, thank you. Um, with the snap benefits
just for the last three days of distribution, so Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday,
We have seen approximately 60 new clients per day of distribution. Just since it came out and in the
media that SNAP benefits weren't getting released. I'll be happy to try and answer any questions that
you might have. I wasn't supposed to be the one presenting this. I just found out I was going to do it.
Yesterday, Cindy's husband had surgery. I know she's pretty disappointed that she didn't get to do this
presentation herself. I have two questions. Sure. Your main program, if I understand your presentation,
was homebound individuals? That is our delivery program. So our main program is
more like a grocery shopping experience. So we're open Mondays. And that is my second question. So you
your source of food comes from the food bank. Is that correct? We get food from Hoosier Hills Food Bank.
We also take community donations and we also purchase food. Okay. And what's the source of
of income for food purchase. Donations? Community donations and local grants. We get no federal funding.
Okay. Great. Thank you. Yep. Any other questions? Any other questions? Are there any other questions?
I guess that is no questions. Thank you very much for your presentation. Thank you. Thank you for your
time. And we have one final applicant here, Summit Hills Community Development Corporation. Hello. Hello.
Hi. Thank you for sticking it out with me. I am Jessica Craig.
And I'm with the Summit Hill, I'm the Housing Stability Coordinator with the Summit Hill Community
Development Corporation and the Bloomington Housing Authority. And I'm here to share some information
about our eviction prevention program, which helps Bloomington residents remain safely and stably housed.
So I think we're all probably aware that housing stability is really the foundation for everything in
someone's life, you know, their employment, education, health and community connection.
When a family loses their housing, it impacts every part of that. Our program steps in before an eviction
happens, providing early intervention and supports to families so that families can maintain stability
and avoid long-term consequences. We serve residents who earn under 80% of the area median income and
are within 14 days of a landlord filing eviction. We can cover up to two months of arrears, including
late fees and legal fees, helping households cash up to stay housed,
Since May of this year, we have helped 15 households remain in their homes and provided $34,963 in direct
assistance, which ends up being about a little over $2,300 per household. To date, we've received 44
applications for this program, which I think shows that the community need far exceeds what our current
financial resources are.
And then this program also works to ease pressures on our local shelters and homelessness support services
by preventing crisis situations that would cause an eviction and send somebody potentially into that
homelessness cycle. Our approach combines financial assistance with landlord mediation and case management.
We work closely with partners such as Beacon, Centerstone, IU Health, New Hooper Families, and the VA
to address
not just immediate housing needs, but also the underlying challenges that put households at risk of
eviction in the first place. We also partner with local landlords, many of whom now refer to us directly
if they have a tenant who is falling behind. And we will work with participating households for the
remainder of their lease to help mitigate potential issues and just to ensure that
that household does not become at risk of eviction again during that releasing period that we become
involved. And then, so we are requesting funding to expand this program's reach and to continue helping
households in urgent need. Eviction prevention is one of the most cost-effective strategies in addressing
housing instability. It strengthens neighborhoods, preserves affordable housing and supports overall
community stability, which reduces strain on emergency services.
So thank you for your time today. And yeah, I guess open up for questions if you have some. Are there
questions? I have one. Is there an educational component to anyone who legalizes your programs in terms
of helping them get on better financial footing once you obviously help them get on better financial
footing? Yeah, so we do that in a couple of different ways.
We have a tenant support and education class that we actually teach for another program of ours, and
we utilize the resources from that class. It's a two-hour class. Then we go over with applicants for
the eviction prevention program, and a component of that is budgeting as well. Something that we find
is that sometimes it's not always,
a lack of budgeting. It's maybe somebody's hours got reduced due to a medical issue or something. And
so we do try to assess the individual client need as well to make sure that we are focusing on the area
that really got them behind and to begin with. But yeah, budgeting is definitely something that we focus
on quite a bit with people. What is your relationship to the Housing Authority? How do you work with them?
Yeah, so the Summit Hill Community Development Corporation is a nonprofit branch of the Housing Authority.
And so I am technically a BHA employee, but then I also work for Summit Hill. It gets a little in the
weeds in terms of my funding breakdowns, if you'll look at my time sheet. But yeah, so Summit Hill is
a nonprofit, a subsidiary of the Housing Authority.
Are there any other questions? Well, thank you very much for your presentation. Appreciate you being
here. Yeah, thank you guys. I hope you have a good rest of your night. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
So I have a question about this. So this eviction prevention program is actually a partner of the Housing
Authority.
Is that correct? Yes. So is it the only program in the Housing Authority that also does eviction prevention?
Of course. That I could say we could send to them as a question just to make sure on that. Because I
mean, it's just weird to me that they don't have a mechanism inside the Housing Authority themselves
to deal with this problem.
I think that becomes an issue of who can receive funding. So they have to have the FI1C3 to be able
to grant funding. Yes. However, the city has a different funding project they have access to. The city
has lots of funding streams. So anyway, it was just a question. Yeah, I'd be happy to submit that to
them though. I think that would be a good verification.
Summit is not one of the one of the granting funds, correct? Can I make a comment on that real quickly?
So we fund, we provide some funding to Summit Heal. So the issue with their funding structure is
that things that will help people that are on public housing to no longer be in need of public housing,
there are restrictions dependent on what kind of funds and where those funds come from, right? So hence
the creation of the
Summit Hill Corporation a couple of years ago, so that organizations like, we had to decline them when
they were part of the housing authority. But when they became part of the Summit Hill, now they're a
501c3, where the city has restrictions because of where the source of funds come from. And it helps
to help the residents to become,
more stable, then that's where nonprofits like our organization can come in and be a bridge for that.
So it's, I think a lot of their issue is, it sounds good, why isn't it part of the housing authorities?
Because where their funds come from, whether state, federal, local, if it's the Bloomington Housing
Authority, some of that funds come from HUD, there are restrictions on it. You can't do certain things.
Thank you.
Okay. Is there time for more general discussion among us, or is there what? Yes, so long as you feel
that we've gone through the applicants properly, that can end the public hearing ordinance. If you would
like to move that forward and say that that's the end of that, then we can have a general discussion.
I believe we are bringing to close the first part of the public hearing on applicant presentations.
I'll second that motion. Thank you.
We don't need to vote on that. Oh, yeah. All those in favor? OK. All those in favor? All those opposed?
OK. I think there's still a public. I think someone else is still online that's from the public. I don't
recognize who Katz is. Is Katz yours? No, that's Katz TV. So they are helping us record this session.
Oh, OK. OK, sorry. Who we left online at this time? Oh, just me.
I think he's meeting Michelle. There's a chat that's, is that anything you have to address? Yeah, the
chat in itself was the read AI notes, the meeting notes, so take 40 of that to be gathered here. But
moving on to the general discussion though, the most important things coming up that I'd like to take
note of, of course,
As we have discussed previously, that if there are any lingering questions as a result of the presentations
and applications that have been submitted, I can forward those to the agencies for clarification,
which would, of course, the clarification would be due prior to the scoring that is due Thursday of
next week, November 13th, by noon. For any
Many members have any questions or difficulties within that process. You can also reach out to me coding
to has been with hands to make sure case I didn't introduce myself earlier. But of course, you all doing
all of the decision making and scoring from here on out. But those are really be
main points to go over after that what we are aiming for as far as our allocation recommendations that
you'll be making is that they will move forward to the redevelopment commission as well as the city
council at later dates which have not fully been determined that's mostly how we will make it onto the
agenda i believe for redevelopment commission we're aiming for uh the december say it's always the
We'll get to which Monday that is very quick, December 15th. And I believe with City Council, we're
also aiming for around, maybe January 14th, but that has not been submitted. When is the deadline for
us to add any questions to that spreadsheet that you sent out? The deadline for any questions to be
added to that spreadsheet will be end of business tomorrow.
terms were at five o'clock. Just a note, I've gone through the applications and I've added a bunch of
questions and then a lot of them were answered, so we'll go back through and remove the questions. Yeah,
and I did leave a section for notes on that spreadsheet as well, so if you feel that they have been
answered, I can do that and I can remove those, but all of you should be able to edit those and make
sure that if any have been answered, you can remove them as we put them all in.
But other than that, I suppose if there are any lingering questions from our committee members? Yeah,
but sure. I just want to make sure I heard that right, that the social services subcommittee allocation
meeting, it's by asserting the number 15. Yes, by assuring that. And to make sure that I get that noted
as well, it will also be held in this exact same room. And also have a Zoom option for those.
So of course, that also will be publicly noticed.
Is the outpatient meeting open? Is it a public meeting or is it a? Since we do have a member from council,
as well as redevelopment commission for open door laws, we are required to actually have some kind of
public access or competitive. About protocol. Process for the meeting. Process for the meeting. I say
an agenda will be
looked at, but primarily the process that we'll go through is I will tabulate the scoring and average
those out completely from all the scores that we received from committee members. At that point, I will
put them onto a spreadsheet in which the agency name, because we do a blind scoring, so
that is in order to hopefully prevent any kind of bias or anything tripling through it, any kind of
deliberations or if anybody has the specific projects they feel more passionately about, goes strictly
by the score as opposed to that. But from there, it will be a decision on a few different things. One,
what kind of allocation to recommend forward for the approval for the redevelopment commission and the
council to undertake.
then deciding on if we get more funding than we anticipate, how to divvy that up in that event amongst
the receiving agencies, and if we receive less funding than what we anticipate, how do we divvy that
up amongst those agencies as well? Yeah, I said that one is, yeah, I'm not forgetting anything on that.
So in my understanding, it's black, and we're not looking at each other's scores, what we all give our
rights for us. And I understand, I think, about depending on what we know, Ben, who might not know now,
about specific dollar amounts. That's on the table then at that time for decision by the committee about
the specific dollar amounts recommended for each applicant at that time of the meeting that we do because
by consensus or whatever we do it.
Correct. I'm happy with everything. That one will be recommended by consensus. So we'll be seeing scores
without names of agencies. Yes. We'll base our allocations. Will we know how much the particular person
that a particular agency has requested? That's on the request. That's on their application.
you'll see it when you go through the scoring sheets. They ask how much money, you'll see it. Okay,
so they'll be blind, but we'll know how much they're asking for. Yes, yes. In fact, that one scoring
spreadsheet that kind of uses something that you can kind of do without having to go into the neighborhood
system and submitting anything that might
require me to unlock it and let you back in. It does have their asks on it. So we do have, I believe,
a total of 260,000 that is being requested total with possibly only 117,000 or give or take that might
deal with that. I'm still confused about one thing. I will start. I tend to overdo it. You might have
done this stuff.
That's a long story, but that's me. I just want to make sure I said what I understood. I want to, because
of our chair's questions helping for me further, I want to say one more thing. I'm still like, this
is the second time I've done this, but it's still been a while. Why is it that the committee coming
into the meeting would not have the total score for each of the applicants on hand? If that's what I
heard, if it's not what I heard, then tell me I'm wrong and I'm bad.
Because I know when the sports review, I'll actually try to get those out to you beforehand. It's just,
you will not know what agency necessarily sport that. So you'll have a list of all the total. Why, why
I say that would be revealed during the meeting. But the way that has been done in past years is to
I suppose from what I'd understood, there was a lot of in-fighting in previous years amongst people
who disagreed with the scores other members were able to get. I don't think we should know each other's
score. That does ask for trouble. Subturity. In my opinion. But I just didn't understand to make it
a habit, because we don't know if I'm right, God knows. But if I'm right, we don't yet even know exactly,
because we don't know what we all think. That's fine.
but we don't know what the total expected dollar amount will be, but more or less, right? We don't know
that. Unfortunately, that we'll talk about. I know, I know. We'll have that different discussion. But
I don't see the danger of not knowing what the total scores were. Excuse me. I have a point of order.
Yes. Doesn't the scoring determine the funding amount?
Yes, I understand your question. If the scoring determines the funding, what is your question? Can I
chime in real quick, Terry, because I was on there the year before you came on, and it was no offense,
Cody, you did a great job. I think part of the reason that you went to this model is that you walked
in, people put all this effort
into submitting these proposals, coming out, doing their presentations, having a great cause for the
committee that had been there year after year to have preferences. This is not what this funding is
supposed to be about. And then to look at the scorecard and to say, oh, so-and-so did it, why change
minds to that? No, this process, you gotta earn it.
You gotta earn it whether you come through us as a foundation or any other foundation. It should not
be treated any differently. You have to put the time and effort in and the need is there. But when you
have more requests than you have funding availability, our personal interest should not be the reason
that someone receives funding. It has to be that there is a proven need. And so I think when we start
hiding the scores, it held us accountable. It held us accountable as a committee
for reviewing the proposal submitted, giving everybody the same time to present, and then revealing
the scores in the end, then you can see who scored what, so you don't, I don't think it was intentional,
I just think it was just to me, so I actually objected to that process. Yeah, and to let that know,
the aggregated scores from all the committee members is I'll take it and average it, so we have nine
committee members, it'll be an average of the nine,
as it stands, and those will be shown before you all make your decisions. So thinking of this, we're
going to get all standings for football. We're going to have somebody at first place, we got an 89,
we don't know who they are. And then somebody else is going to go, yeah, so it's going to fall. The
most important thing is though, CBDG money is for very, very low income individuals. So it's 80% of
AMI. And what is that amount?
It varies by household. So as a starting point, at this point, this year, it's $60,500. I think one
of the pages on the application, like one of the first pages, charts it out. Yeah, so they do calculate
it to a household rate. So we try to take that into consideration. But it does start off at about $60,500.
And on average, it jumps per household about anywhere between $5,000 to $7,000.
And doesn't the scoring take into account something about how larger percentage of the client has served
by a particular agency meets the lowest standard versus the medium standard?
I, we do try to have something like that built into it. So it's, and part of the overall program requirement
is that at least 51% of the people that each agency serve have to be under that 80% or less of the area
median income. So that, you know, entire percentage of course that they serve at that rate means they're
reaching, you know, more of those folks in the community. Okay.
Let me just respond to the gentleman's question about- George. You said George, thank you. He's still
a gentleman. My interest is only having information at the time to make decisions that we can ask and
make. I don't disagree with generally anything being said, because it's just common sense, I think,
but if you don't know about it, ask and do it. Speak for myself, I'm just saying, that as I think if
depending on where it takes, if we have a list, an anonymous list of 11 applicants, and we know they've
been scored bust, top to bottom, you're actually saying, which is all right. And then we're saying,
let's say we've just got 50% of the funding actually we thought, what do you want to do? For me, I'm
wondering, I thought, gee, if I knew who was, how that broke,
And that list of 11 how I thought about fixing addressing the allocations might be different as I thought
about that exactly unfair discussion. Maybe I think I could argue each way or it helps me make a decision
to be more
Can we say ethically or ethically these days? I don't know. I don't even talk about it. Whatever it
is, it is happy and good. We could decide that we make our allocations based on what we think we're
going to get. And then we say, well, if we get less than that,
everyone will get a percentage. Oh, I know. Why do you say how we get a percentage? More than that,
everybody will get a percentage. Yeah. It all comes out. Yeah. We have options. Cody, you discussed
this earlier, but you want to repeat this thing about over or underfunding, please? Oh, yes. So one
of the reasons that we do decide, I'll go into that first, is the over and underfunding is because we
really won't get an idea of what our total allocation is until usually April.
of each year. So we do get this process started earlier so we can complete other things that are required
for the program of environmental reviews. But we do need to decide that if we get more funding amongst
the people that we recommend for allocation, how can we distribute that amongst them? And that is a
committee decision based on consensus. And then if we are receiving less than that total
amount that we think that we get, which we're basing it honestly currently on what we received for the
2025 program here. These numbers are subject to change and unless if they're forced in the federal budget,
do you have the potential of not being received at all? So it's
not exactly an enviable position to kind of, I know it might feel like in some cases we're jumping the
gun by even doing this this early, but with all the other things that we have to do and how do we have
to take this into account for the city's annual action plan, it does make sense to do it this early
ahead of time. All right, is there any other issue that anyone would like to raise that needs to be
discussed?
I wanted to hear the presentations today before I did any story. It was important for me to hear what
they had to say. And one of the things is that of the median income issue and then come
The priority of people being served in the city, right? Rather than the county. Yes. Exactly. Okay.
Those were my issues there. Most of the applications, they do typically state the percentage that they're
serving in the city and in the county. I think there's a line item question of some kind of that. I've
currently distributed that to where they can be more clear on that. Yeah. Although I think honestly,
there might even be another step I can probably take.
to maybe clarify that more in other years that just did not get brought to my attention with enough
time to actually make it a meaningful change, especially since it was the middle of the application
period. But that's something that counts to be evident. But it is also good to note that all of these
agencies are required to be reporting on any funding they receive for that
period in which they're actually using that funding. So we do have to keep track of, and they are required
to have their clients certified, whether in the case of things like food pantries, they can be more
reliant on self-certification as it's a presumed benefit. But we do take client demographic information
as well as income levels.
I said thank you to most of them. I think I hope I did. Okay, so we already there's no additional email.
No, actually, although in this particular case with this having been reported, I would like to provide
the recording and also make it available. From city sources as well. So.
It'll definitely be one of those that will go out to any committee members that weren't able to attend
tonight, which was one who couldn't make it total and then one or two came in maybe a little late. So
I'll make sure everybody gets the chance to hear every presentation. But it is the plan for here. Okay.
There are any other issues that need to be discussed?
I would like to go on record before we adjourn and just say thank you to all of you. Honestly, this
is a heavy lift. It's not indivisible with the decisions you'll have to make, but I very much appreciate
everybody's time, effort and giving for this evening and our battle against this evening as well. Sure,
sure. Motion to adjourn? Motion to adjourn.
All the time. Not available.