CCMIN110601 - Laserfiche WebLink

Ms. Dennis inquired about where the needs data would originate. Would it be from census data, requests to the city, from the service agencies, etc.? Ms. McKeehan said that is one of the things staffis still working on improving. The proposal is to do that every two years and to assess the needs for the entire Valley as well as just Pleasanton. Then staff would try to calculate how much money it can try to award to take care of the needs. To this point, the process has been backwards. Ms. Morley said that currently there are public hearings in January for the Community Development Block Grants as well as the Human Services grants. The community is asked to come to the hearings and state the needs. Most agencies which ask for funding appear at these heatings. Last year saw the commencement of joint heatings with the City of Livermore in order to work more cooperatively on the granting processes. In addition a facilitator assisted in the review process to talk about how to draft the grant applications, review them and award the funds. At the same time, staffis reviewing a needs assessment methodology, which should come before Council early next year. Ms. Dennis felt this was an extremely difficult problem because the community the Commission is attempting to serve has low visibility. She did not want to underestimate the difficulty of developing a needs assessment. She referred to the Commission Minutes of May 2, 2001 where there was a motion made to accept the staff recommendation for a secondary mini- grant process. She asked staff to clarify that. Ms. Morley said at the hearing in April, when the Commission reviewed the grants, a mandatory presentation from the applicants was required. Prior to this there had been discussion about perhaps not having enough funding available. There had been a major effort to promote new people and new projects and staff was anticipating an abundance of new project applicants. Staff hoped to mitigate that possibility by establishing a priority list, so if a particular grantee did not use all the resources, the funds could be reallocated because there had already been a formal process of consideration in the budget. Ms. Dennis said so that is the mini-process staffwas recommending. Ms. Morley said that was the intent of the discussion. Unfortunately, at the hearing there were not enough funding requests and then three agencies did not receive funding because of protocol issues. That is why there was a balance of $40,000 left over. Mr. Campbell asked if anyone in Pleasanton could apply for these grants? Ms. Morley said it has to be a non-profit organization with a Pleasanton resident on its board of directors and the organization has to demonstrate accountability for the stability of the organization with a CPA certified audit. Mr. Campbell asked if the process and timing were the same every year? Ms. Morley said the timeline has been consistent every year. Pleasanton City Council 19 11/06/01 Minutes