 Yes, President here. Yeah. Here. The afternoon, noon on this cold day. Come on. So we have a few items starting with Ms. Alonzo's financial report. If you have any questions, she's here to answer those for you. Your Benjamin. I apologize. He didn't do invocations. Lord, for the beauty of this day and for all of the activities you've allowed us to ever ourselves this day. Lord, we pray for this city of ours. For those of us who sit around the table to year and to make decisions that are viable for the health of this community. Thus, in and in addition, we pray for this nation of ours. We pray for the children. We pray for families. We pray for situations that are in crisis. We simply ask that you might touch and energize and yet sensitize us to your will and to your way. Allow persons who are standing in blistering heat. Allow them to sense and feel today that a group of us are remembering the crisis. We ask it. Thank you, sir. Any questions regarding our April 2018 financial report? Seeing none, our first council discussion and two after that, sent around our homeless services, coordinated services with three providers. They always are gracious to come and give us some presentations as we start a new fiscal year. And the first is the regional homeless coordinator services and regional inclement weather center. Ms. Jennifer Moore, senior director for Financial Stability Council for the United Way of the Midland. All right, Mr. Mayor and Council, City Manager. It's so wonderful to be here with you today. What we wanted to do is give you a little bit of an update on the inclement weather center contract and also regional contract for coordination of homeless services. So we're going to walk you through a few slides. But if you have any questions, please let us know. We've been really fortunate and grateful to work with the city and partnership to address homelessness and also with some really amazing partners, which many are here today. So thank them for also being here. So overview, there's actually two contracts. One is for direct services and that is for operations of the inclement weather center, which provides sheltering for homeless adults from November to March when it's 40 degrees and below. We work different partners there and we'll talk about that. And then also street outreach for people who are on the streets that we're trying to engage in care. The second contract is our regional contract and that is systems coordination and service coordination. So we'll talk a little bit about both of those. So first, we want to give you a snapshot of kind of where we are in homelessness here in the central Midlands. So we were really fortunate that during our annual count that we do at the end of January, we've had some pretty steep declines. So from 2013 to 2008, we had about 8 to 9% decreases per year. You can see from 2013 to 2008, which was a 40% total decrease. But while we found this past year from 2017 to 2018, our numbers basically weren't changed. So we basically had leveled out this current year. And when we look at our inclement weather center numbers, we were higher in our unduplicated headcount this year. So that's something that we're looking at so that we can analyze the trends there. You can see we've also had historically steep declines in homelessness among our veterans. We have a deep partnership working with VA and other service providers to implement that work. We've been very aggressive in trying to secure new housing and street outreach for you. And when we speak about youth, we're talking about 17 to 24 year olds. And we're really targeting that population because we really want to end the cycle of homelessness very quickly for young people before they become long term chronically homeless people on the streets, which is some of the issues that we're seeing currently right now. Have you seen any decline? Because that seems to be the population that creates most of the issues for both residents and We'll talk about that. We're pretty, we've dipped a tiny bit with chronic, but we're kind of holding steady with the chronic number. Jennifer, the homeless, the veteran numbers in real numbers with what it looks like. About 155 this current year is what we counted. And so that obviously has come down quite a bit. And we've been working, of course, like I said, very closely with the VA. So we have a monthly case conferencing meeting with the dorm VA staff, as someone on the street self identifies as a veteran, we actually worked with the VA to verify that they do have eligibility for services to try to connect them for that very specialized housing. The one thing that's we're fortunate with veteran homelessness is that is frankly the one place in the federal government that they have been very supportive with new resources. And we are very fortunate that our Columbia Housing Authority, which is amazing, has about 450 units of housing specific to veterans who are homeless. And so that's really helped us with that number down over the past five years. Alright, so the Inclement Weather Center. So we work with some really great partners. So transitions, the Midlands Housing Alliance is our primary entity that does the day to day operations of the center. We work with the Salvation Army of the Midlands for the evening and the breakfast meal. And then we have private vendors that do security for us and transportation services. And we do transportation is required because the location, the Inclement Weather Center, we frankly don't want people crossing NUG Street at night. So we do pick up at the old at the cleanup parts location, which is by the new Metro police station, which by the way, we love that location. So talk about the summary real quick of the IWC. So this year, we had 67 nights of shelter compared to 65 last night or last year. That included one night that transitions did extend their hours and their day center for hurricane event. Not to mention the countless nights that they provided additional shelter in their lobby and other spaces just to get folks out of the elements when it was not quite the temperature ready below 40, but there was some severe weather incidents. We were budgeted for 80 nights. This year's head count of unduplicated clients was 890 individuals. And again, these are adults without children. That compares to 750 from the previous year. So you can see our unduplicated count did tick up a bit. So that resulted in unduplicated or duplicated nights of shelter of about 8700 compared to 6300 last year. So we did tick up quite a bit. That did have a bit of an impact on the budget. So we became very close on our meal budget just simply because of the higher head count. Our average per night also increased. So we were at 154 this year compared to 90 last year. 98 had ticked down a bit. We were about 130 the year before that. So we did kind of tick down and then we ticked back up again. And what's really kind of troubling to us is that we show that 55%. So over half of the clients have a disabling condition and many have more than one. And so permanent housing placement that they can sustain on their own tends to be very difficult for us, especially with the severe limitations that we have of permanent supportive housing. And that's housing that is very specialized. It's typically federally funded. And it would be a voucher attached with case management. That's what Kristen's group does with USC supportive housing. They provide the case management element to some federally funded voucher for the Columbia Housing Authority. And then we had 35 nights. Yes, sir. What's the process for PR services? How do we bring that into focus? What do we do? Perhaps it's for the down. Yeah, we'll talk about our outreach efforts, but just briefly a couple things. So to be screened for our very limited federal housing options and a bit broader array of services, we have a two tier process. So one is a very brief screening that really anyone can do. Just getting basic demographic information and what the situation is. And then we have a little bit longer vulnerability assessment that we screen people for housing. And what we're trying to do is to get the folks that have the highest interactions with service systems for their the hospital systems, justice systems who have a high vulnerability health wise to try to get those folks prioritized for housing first so that we can get those posts off the streets. That's basically how it works. And we'll talk about street outreach in a second. But now once that once that the two problem processes taken into consideration when we've done it, the next step is possibly referral. Correct. So referral out to appropriate services and for each client that's very different. So sometimes it is a referral to housing. We operate a prioritization of housing for people who are most vulnerable. Again with those very high service interactions. So those folks are prioritized for housing but oftentimes for folks that have a very challenging history or a challenging approach to reaching them for services sometimes it takes several different providers getting involved to coordinate here. Okay so on the inclement weather center about a quarter of our folks had positive exits. And so again that is about 172 that were placed an emergency shelter. Most of those were at transitions. Many others were engaged with services with other agencies. We had nine that were placed into permanent housing. But really the issue that we have going back to more than half of the clients have a disabling condition. It's just very hard to find housing that they can afford or housing that meets their needs. Because these are folks typically that need long term voucher assistance in case management attached to it in the form of permanent supportive housing. So the regional contract we wanted to back up just a second give you a little bit of an overview of our united way work in general about homelessness and then take a deep dive into the regional work itself. So we are the lead at united way for our local homeless coalition which is mock the midlands area consortium for the homeless. And really what that means is that we have a key role in coordination of services and planning across different agencies. So whether it be our partners with the city of Columbia's regional contract of services. But really a vast array of public and private entities in the community really trying to work on systems change and also to address those gaps that we have in housing services and making sure that we're really connecting all the pieces together. We also secure resources so we coordinate an annual application to HUD that's about three point one million dollars per year that brings in resources for permanent supportive housing and other types of housing services. And then a united way we invest over a million dollars to provide matching funds primarily for those federal resources. We conduct the annual point in time count which is the snapshot that we do every January and that was that number that I said that was basically unchanged to that entry slide. But that's where we train volunteers and we deploy them into the community to do a very in-depth survey that we deduplicate so that we can really look at trends of homelessness over time. But again it is a snapshot. It does tend to over represent populations typically single individuals who that we encounter on the streets. It does do I would say a vast undercount of families with children because those tend to be in doubled up situations and we don't have enough sheltering resources for them. So it is a little bit of a skewed count but it is one lens that we look at to analyze homelessness. We also operate the homeless management information system. So HMIS is our database that we use so if you are in a shelter that's how we record your shelter stay. If case managers put case management notes that's how we make referrals across agencies and that's how really agencies can track the history of a client through the system so that they can really understand the full picture. We also do homeless research. So for example right now we are working on a youth study so again that cohort of 17 to 24 year olds we are matching HMIS data to public our state public data warehouse that revenue fiscal affairs. So we are looking at things like juvenile justice involvement foster care enrollment of young people who have experienced homelessness so that we can better understand that path of homelessness so that we can target this system and service interventions that are needed. And then also system performance evaluation. So we use the information in HMIS to really get a picture of how our system is functioning and so we can look at first time homelessness on an annualized basis. We can look at returns of homelessness so that we can see how many people exit successfully to housing and then cycle back through the system in a six month or 24 month period. We can also look at things like street outreach. We can look at the successful housing placements of those street outreach workers which I've always said is the hardest job in the world being a street outreach worker due to get people into housing. So that's the big picture. Our team that works on homelessness at United Way we have a six member team that is funded. We have about a position in the half that are funded through the city regional contract. The rest are funded through three federal grants that we have. So we do have different roles for different folks but we all are very interconnected. So diving into the regional contract specifically. So I was here back in March talking about meal share coordination so I'm happy to kind of look at any questions that you have there but we have been fortunate that we've had the new guidelines up and running for Findlay Park for about two months now and that was where we truncated the slots for the meal share. So for example before on Saturday or Sunday you could basically apply for a permit of really any time that you wanted. Now we have a breakfast lunch and a dinner slot and then if folks want to provide you know services or meals in addition to that then they partner with one of the lead agencies. So again that's been up and running for just under two months but we've been really really pleased with that. We've been working on employment coordination so we worked with Richland Library to host this year's second breaking barriers event. So this is an event really to target folks who are homeless that have background issues so whether it's criminal credit issues that prevents them from getting employment. So we had 163 people at this event from that we had 13 that gained employment 11 that enrolled in the do workforce investment at program and then we had 19 that attended an expungement workshop with apple seed and we paid for sled checks that we did on site so that folks could understand really what's on their record. This is the one, Sewell. Galbert's been working with you on? I'm sorry? Sewell, Galbert. Sewell has been working with you on? Yep. We also work on landlord coordination so we've had a couple of lease-up events with the Columbia Housing Authority and we have a landlord leadership team and the purpose here really is to win over landlords and to help them look past barriers and so when an individual or family is looking to rent and they have those blemishes whether again credit or criminal background they really just give them a chance for housing. The other thing that we did with a small pilot program with United Way resources is we started the peace of Mind Fund and the peace of Mind Fund is basically a risk mitigation fund so if a landlord is very hesitant to release to lease to someone then this is kind of an extra security blanket an extra dollar amount that they can tap into if there's damages and we've had really good success with this program and I'm happy to report we've had no claim so far. The other thing is our youth and transition work so again looking at our young people 17 to 24 again over the last four years we've added 78 new units of housing and services including dedicated street outreach. In addition to that we were able to tap into a private grant from DV&T of $100,000 to target with our youth partners and also our family service providers to really help them kind of overcome barriers so they can kind of get to that next level as well. New this year we started working with Homeless No More to do motel vouchers for unsheltered families with children and these were families we really wanted to target this program very specifically and these are families that are either referred from United Way or identified by the police department either after hours or when the shelters are full and it's a motel voucher just to get them off the streets. This program has helped six families which equated to about 26 children that were in unsheltered situations. We're happy to report that of that six then all are safely housed right now so three went to shelter spots when those shelter spots opened two went into rapid rehousing and so that's basically a security deposit to get them back into housing and one was able to find housing and sustain it on their own. Question on that so for the motel voucher programs how much money goes into that how much are you budgeting for that. It's pretty small it was 10 thousand this year and I think we reduced it a little bit because it had a fairly modest start so we reduced it a little bit maybe to maybe five to seven thousand this year. Because I would think I mean six families over here I hear a lot of families and that's I would think that and because of the lack of shelter and I know now that there's no more and the family shelter together that hopefully will help but I would think that that's certainly a met need in the past and so I would love to see that but so with that five to ten thousand dollars does that include the case management for the families and then how long do they follow the family. It does so the the process is so primarily the primary referral source is our is the Columbia Police Department officers. This was something that we heard we can be monthly outreach meetings with our street outreach workers and CPD attends and one of the things that we did here is that was a gap that officers were finding families with children and they didn't they didn't have resources and so that was a gap that we wanted to address this past year and we wrote we wrote that in with resources. I will say that on a united way we also fund motel vouchers again. It's a it's a it's a modest pot of money to be perfectly honest those funds can go just so incredibly quickly. It's a delicate balance between satisfying those basic needs and then longer come issues like housing that we can put money into. But the basic process here so CPD identify someone homeless no more has a relationship with a very specific motel. There's paperwork at the front desk that the officer completes leaves it there. A referral is made to homeless no more which does a triage because again they're they're together now which is amazing. And so family shelter would do the the initial triage if space is available there they would be issued a spot there or you know one of our very limited other options like the family promise or they could be screened for other things like St. Lawrence Place or the rapid rehousing program that's operated also by homeless no more. So that's the case management. Yes. So six family. Yeah they're not they're not quite spent down it was a bit of a slow start that's why we kind of reduced it a little bit. So they'll they'll probably spend out maybe not quite all of that money this year. We'll have a little bit left over. Excuse me. How do you determine specific. The hotel. I'm sorry. I'm sorry the specific hotel. Yeah. How do you. Is there a list of hotels. No there's one specific hotel that's pretty centrally located and homeless no more developed relationship with them. I guess it's maybe surprising or not but it's it's kind of hard to get hotels to work with you on something like this like a voucher program because they don't know their suspect that you're not going to pay the bill first of all but they're also such you know cautious about who you may be putting into the unit. So homeless no more work with reach up to many different hotels but found one that was going to be a partner in the program. It is in the economy. No sir no no it's just it's just Columbia CBD referrals is what it is. We there has there has frankly been interest from other jurisdictions and we said that we would be more than welcome to accept resources to do that. Yeah. And I want to finish your presentation to you but I want to get this question. Yeah this is good. You're on deck first same question. I'm going to ask all of your counterparts. So wonderful work for me to say that up front always partnership has been going on for many years now. Million dollars that this council has committed for multiple years. These programs everything that y'all are doing the data that you presented to just the homelessness decreasing in Columbia you know I push that we've had this conversation to me these things that you're presenting are working for those individuals who want the services. Our question what do we do and what are we doing for the individuals who don't think so when we are now facing and I'm just I'm saying this because it's a daily if not multiple times a day especially that I'm having with business owners and residents and our police chief we're when we are from the city's perspective about to have to engage in some other tight alternatives downtown in particular and resources that are going to be visible to people and I'm not particularly excited about maybe having to do but the aggressive behaviors when we I mean not a day goes by and I'm being serious on this including last night with my daughter. If we're approached by someone and we try to help mainly but by all of the resources that y'all are outlining if someone says well I don't want that I've been there I've done that this that and the other or I'm not from here. What are we doing or what are we going to present in this year this year to do something that's a little bit differently to help provide and make a difference in that regard. And I love a perfect segue. Okay. Wasn't planned. It wasn't. It wasn't rehearsed. So Motel vouchers were new this year as we saw an emerging need. The other thing new that we're proposing for next year is to expand a travel voucher program. So at United Way we have been funding a travel voucher program for probably about a decade for our partners at Salvation Army and this is as someone is stranded here to help them with gas money or a bus ticket to get back to their home community. What we do have proposed in our renewal request is to expand that working with transitions to offer that same service that if someone has a home community that they can return to and they're physically and medically able to travel on their own is to provide that voucher for them. So that's one thing. I want to talk about street outreach real quick. So we have worked coordinating street outreach for several years now. About a year or so we started working with the solicitor's office. The solicitor's office had a listing of individuals that had very high frequency of justice interaction and our purpose there really initially started with our street outreach workers because we really wanted to kind of match those individuals with services when we could. What we've done most recently is we've expanded that partnership and so we have worked with Columbia Police Department specifically the Metro and the North Regions to identify a small number of individuals that have frequent justice interactions law enforcement interactions. We've also are working with the city center partnership the public defender's office and of course the solicitor's office to really link those individuals to services. This is a pretty complex list of individuals. The purpose here so all the partners have a little bit different purpose but we are coordinating together. Our purpose here is to screen for housing. So when we started looking at the list we found that most of these individuals to your point do not seek sheltering. These are the folks who are not necessarily going to transitions even the transitions is full every day. These are folks that at times will come to the inclement weather center but not always unless it's very cold. So we wanted to screen them for housing because what we were finding is that these were folks that were scoring very high on that vulnerability screening tool that we talked about earlier and that's how you get into those voucher programs. The other thing is to connect people to services because we did find that several or many people on the list were disassociated from providers in general and that we think that's from various lots of different reasons. These are people who might have cycled in and out of programs over a long period of time and maybe had become disassociated or dissatisfied with the system and so we wanted to reignite and re-energize those connections to providers. And then also to decrease the frequency of repeat offenses and so a couple examples. We have we're working currently with the public defender's office so we have a PD who has someone who has frequent interactions with justice systems who's coming up for trial and could not be located and so we would put an alert out to our street outreach workers to see if we could find this individual so that we could get her to her court date. We had another individual who came up on that prioritized housing list and our housing provider could not find the individual. Well I'm to find out he was an Alvin S. Glenn the entire time that we were looking for him. So this was very clear to us that we had to increase those those connections. We're also talking with Alvin S. Glenn to we've had a couple meetings with them to also increase that partnership there so that if we have someone who even though may not be currently associated with a service provider or a housing provider that is detained that we can possibly get out there and do an assessment on the individual. The list itself is 74 individuals and you can see we've only had this have been running for less than six months. 12 are housed 42 we've been able to screen for supportive services and that's that vulnerability housing assessment and we have 45 actively engaged with street outreach. My understanding is about 300 and obviously a portion of those are more aggressive. More challenging. Yes more challenging. What other options do we have we can't force them in the program. We can't push them into housing. But we have to do something that is clearly to change the culture of what's happening because it's affecting our residents our patrons our business people visitors. We're getting more and more increasingly phone calls than I've ever seen before and the population seems to be shrinking but this population doesn't seem to. Yeah so let me talk about why the number it is about 300 or so that's chronically homeless. 74 we we had an initial list again from North Region South Region from CPD Public Defender Solicitor City Center Partnership and there was an overlap so we wanted to do duplicate that list and we would expect overlap with that and then we wanted to contain the rest. So really to try to focus efforts on this initial cohort of people. I can tell you that every person on this list is a very challenging situation. Two things so an example of one thing that we're doing now with one individual who's on the list is we are engaging probably about six different service providers including the Public Defender's Office to get a very well-known person into more stable housing currently and it is very staff intensive because it is very plan A, plan B when those things don't work out then we're gonna try plan C. So that's one example. The other thing is that you know really I think regionally this is a very challenging thing to say but I think the lack of resources that we have for mental health in our community paired with the lack of permanent supportive housing is going to be a real challenge for us. So we do have excellent mental health providers with Mercy and the Permanent Health Act team but I think that we could push for additional resources from other municipalities. Folks who don't want that help that's our challenge. I mean you know I don't think there's a lack of resources in our community. I don't believe that. I think we've seen it for a long time. What I see is that we've got a group of folks that we can't force legally or any other way in to taking advantage of this but they're creating issues that are public safety issues and we're going to have to act at some point. So we need to come together and find out a solution because we're not going to be able to tolerate it and that's a terrible way to look at it but it's reality. No it is reality and let me be very clear we don't condone bad behavior. So if someone's doing something illegal we would expect that they'd be arrested. Now we know the complications there because you arrest someone you're taking an hour of the officer's time at least to process them. Get them to Alvin Eskel and if they'll accept them and then by the time they talk to them. Which is not the end solution. It's not the end solution because it does nothing for anyone exactly. So that's why we are trying to improve those connections with the detention center to make sure that we have street outreach engaged where they can it's street outreach is not an on demand kind of thing. So if you get a call about someone at a local hotel that's causing something we can try to get someone there as quickly as we can but what's more effective for us is try to identify the person to see if they're homeless. Sometimes they're not to see if we can find them identify them with our street outreach or in our database to engage them into some type of services. I think what we've have been talking internally and we would like to likely convene a meeting of different providers in the community pretty soon with city leadership to really kind of talk through some of these issues to see to make sure we're maximizing all of the resources out there in partnerships. It is a very targeted community and it's been a pretty steady level for numbers. I mean it's decreased a little bit and increased a little bit but it's truly coming to a safety issue. How about the mental health issues because it's the most important program. Yeah and I was going to ask that question. Yeah and this is going to be a much longer conversation. I'm going to make sure you do all the I'm going to make a presentation. Apparently it's chairs irritating Howard. Mid meeting adjustment here. Now this is going to start week in and it'll be a moment. It'll be you. New chairs are out order. I can't get your pass. Yes sir. And then after that that's this. Yeah we've got a different we've got a different prong in place of justice, triage. We've heard we've listened to data there are 300 persons I think that are aggressive and they have been active in terms of their which action you uh that I think the 300 really is people who are identified as what's called chronically homeless and that's folks who've been homeless for a long time or multiple times over a period of years and would have some kind of disabling conditions. So those those are folks that's going to be challenging to find housing for because they are going to be very limited in their ability to support themselves on their own long term and often have very intensive police management. Well part of that the I think the CPD list and the the other list is 70 74 right now. Yeah well a part of that a part of that is reflected in the place of many of the several other places where uh these preferences take place. I've heard all of that I haven't we haven't talked a lot and maybe this is uh time for another conversation the psychopsychologically and psychotrophically if persons are in a place in a dark place there are going to be incidents of things happening on main street or in the distor or in the community around. How do we add it to psychologically with an assessment whatever the disorder yields and include that and make that a very real part. Yeah that's what no that's the next yeah that's an excellent point so we have three assertive community treatment teams in our community and those are called ACT teams two are at Mercy the Mental Illness Recovery Center and then one at Palmetto Health and those are multi disciplinary street outreach teams that have a psychiatrist and not a psychiatrist that sits in an office one that's on the streets street outreach and case management and they have very low case loads and to exactly your point their purpose is to really do assessments and in-depth treatment of folks that have very complex needs but even having three teams it is it's it's very limiting so I think we are probably at the junction that we need to kind of look at making sure that we're bringing all of our partners in to look at things. I only have a funding slide next which is not interesting so if there are other questions please ask. Just the budget where we are currently we have one more month to include expenses so again we're we're going to be slightly under probably in both grants but just to kind of let you know where we are. Thank you Jennifer. Okay thank you. Okay. Is there a way you could provide that for the floor? I'd like to keep your studio there. That's the power point. Let me get that. Okay thank you. Thank you Jennifer. Our next report is an update on the housing first program as Kristen as Connors with supportive housing services Palmetto Health U.S.D. Medical Group. Yes good afternoon. Mr. Mayor members of council city manager I know many of you but my name is Kristen Connors I work at USC supportive housing services and it dawned on me when I got here today that our program started as a pilot in 2008 so this will officially be the 10-year birthday or anniversary we started with 10 units and we're now up to over 40 so a lot of progress has been made in maybe not a little bit of time but enough time to where we're really excited to continue the partnership and very thankful for your support. Good. Okay. So real quick many of you are familiar with the housing first model but a brief overview as the name suggests we quickly move clients from homelessness into permanent housing and it's nationally recognized as a best practice here in Columbia we partner with the Columbia Housing Authority they provide the apartments they provide payments for rent and for utilities and then we provide the supportive services so Jennifer mentioned the ACT team and it really talks about hard to reach individuals people who are very vulnerable they're difficult to engage so what we do is really have to accept the client's point of view we patiently remove obstacles and then we'll provide ongoing follow-up sometimes if housing is not immediately available we'll have to keep the clients engaged and we'll have to keep them interested and connected to our staff and to our services I already mentioned that the folks are vulnerable they're difficult to engage so we'll have to meet the clients where they are we'll go to shelters we'll go to soup kitchens we'll go to the woods and then sometimes we have to get even more creative than that we'll go to doctor's offices we'll meet people in fast food restaurants or we'll meet them while they're waiting for the bus this really illustrates the low barrier approach to housing first and it increases the client's interest and therefore their success so I'm really proud that in addition to providing direct services we value community involvement we've participated in the police roll call we've participated in provider nights down at the inclement weather center the point in time count we serve as a mock access point and Jennifer mentioned all of those in her presentation we've participated in homeless court we've had several successful referrals with our clients to homeless court and then we partner with the housing authority to do a movie night which is a good opportunity for clients to have a positive social outlet and we were thankful to many area businesses that donated pizzas and desserts some door prizes so that's something new that we started this year that we had good luck with next the team for housing first we're all pretty cross-trained because it takes a village we have a case manager we have a Hapua case manager and that stands for housing opportunities for people with AIDS we have an outreach worker we do mental health and substance abuse therapy we have a medical adherence specialist and this person accompanies clients to daughter's appointments we get everybody hooked up with primary care and subsequently specialty care as needed but this person provides what I call interpretive services and so if the client is not necessarily comfortable communicating with the doctor and vice versa this person and help alleviate that tension I serve as the director and then we have a housing coordinator through the Columbia Housing Authority so housing first at supportive services at supportive housing services we employ a scattered site housing approach that means that units are located all throughout the city of Columbia we utilize housing in apartment complexes we do property management companies we also work with private landlords we try to sprinkle our units throughout the community and throughout all the districts in the city we try not to have an overabundance of clients in one neighborhood or in one area we also have 15 Hapua units which is funded through the city's Department of Community Development and housing opportunities for people with AIDS it's a specific funding source through HUD yep we have two two bedrooms and two three bedrooms so by and large we focus on individuals but we recently kind of expanded into some family units and all of those units have a disabled person as the head of household so Kristen the actual two and three bedrooms those are families that's not families it's not single homeless people you put together nope they're families clients have to meet the HUD definition of homelessness which means staying in a shelter or staying on the streets so people who are staying with family members are considered doubled up they're not eligible for these units so the good thing on that is really the people who need it the most are the ones who are targeting and selecting for the units when people move in we provide a starter set of housewares so that'll be pots and pans towels dishes cleaning supplies we'll get a starter set of groceries through Columbia Metro Baptist their food bank food pantry and that's I'm really thankful for that partnership because when somebody's lived on the street for so long obviously they don't have salt and pepper and ketchup and flour and all that stuff that they need to get started so we'll provide that as well and then the Columbia Housing Authority will do furniture so a bed couches we've had a lot of success with our neighbors donating furniture to the program that's always helpful always needed and the services that we provide are case management mental health counseling and substance abuse support medical adherence I already talked about and then we also do support groups and that's a nice feature because homelessness I think is a very communal experience and I find that when folks move into independent housing there's an isolation that goes on in the transition so people can come back to the office and kind of work through that with folks in their similar situations for this fiscal year and these numbers are through around June 1st we've had 48 total placements nine new movements seven discharges and 71% of those have gone to permanent housing 258 encounters with outreach on Mondays and Wednesdays we provide walk-in services so anybody who needs a place to stay whether or not they're eligible for our program or not can meet with somebody and get pointed in the right direction whether it be a shelter transitional housing program either other like Mercy and other providers that may not do housing per se but if somebody needs to do their laundry or things like that we'll point them in the right direction the average length of stay is 671 days which is 22 months so you'll see there's not a lot of movements and not a lot of discharges so when people come they stay and that's the goal of permanent supportive housing so we're really proud of that client success just this year I made a list of things that our clients have done to better themselves you can see GED driver's license emotional support pet a lot of income disability benefits or employment people have accessed medical care volunteer opportunity somebody left transitions and now goes back to volunteer at transitions which I think is pretty cool we've had families get back together not so much in our units but if somebody's been homeless for an extended period of time and we're kind of cut off from their family they now have pride and they can go back still an important American value isn't it I think so yeah and then substance abuse detox and impatient rehabilitation so to finish up I try to think about a story you know a really compelling story of somebody who's gone through the program and I found this quote from our client satisfaction survey and I think it does a great job of illustrating all that we do to encompass meeting people where they are a lot of programs I think consider housing the end game but we really work to start when somebody gets into housing we don't just kind of drop them we continue to work some people are able to move on and find a place of their own and not need case management support but a lot of people are not that's from one of your clients and I'll read it in case anybody can't see all I can say is that the program picked me up turned me around showed me how to walk taught me how to run and I've been running ever since not away from my problems but to the solution it's awesome to be a complete person once again is that any questions for me thank you thank you for your support thank you for letting us come and share our success we're very passionate about what we do we think the program is a great example of leveraging community resources and look forward to working together that number of I thought it was either transitions of people that have exited yeah exited that's just this year this year so it was a good number I remember the start of remember that David Parker came and pitched us the pilot and my first knowledge of it was David Parker driving through town and listening to the National Public Radio and it was piloted in it was new new concept so the transition from this to independent living if you want to call it that right is there a follow-along with those folks or do they so after somebody officially vacates the unit they'll get 30 days of case management support but depending on the situation part of the discharge plan will be to find out do they need to go somewhere with a case manager and if you think about it if somebody's involved in mental health well they're case managers you know through those agencies so depending on the support services they need it while they were that's right and it's everybody came in with a long list of complexities and so they're all gonna exit with hopefully a shorter list but still an individualized discharge plan thank you Chris thank you provider is an update from Transitions Homeless Center Mr. Craig hurry chief executive officer for transition thank you it's an honor to be here and thanks for having me and be able to take a little bit of time I've been told to take a little bit of time so I'm going to try to expedite this a little bit if you hear nothing else that I say thank you thank you for what you do thank you for helping transitions we look forward to that continued support what do you get when you help us you get people out there trying to find permanent housing for people you get outreach on the streets so transitions people are out trying to find homeless people to draw them in you get the inclement weather center you get shelter beds every night and we're like 99% occupancy so we're full every night you get job searching so we're helping clients find work and you get the day center which not only operates in the winter but like I say it's hot right now so there's ice in the day center right now there's air conditioning and there's water the entire day so you can get ice at 10 o'clock in the morning or you can get ice at 3 o'clock in the afternoon whenever you need it and then meals we served 244,000 meals last year and we did that with the help of partners like Salvation Army here's a summation of success since we've been open we did hit our seventh birthday on Friday so we had a party down there with the clients we celebrate everybody's birthday on transition's birthday it's too hard to do everybody's individually so we just do them all on June 15th and we were it was a good milestone for us we've put 2018 people into permanent housing since we've been open we see 3,500 a year so I know the point and count numbers but if you look over the year we touch about 3,500 plus unique people every year at transitions so there is a need the 260 beds are full almost every night we have 50 great partners United Way is one of them and Mercy and Goodwill I could sit here and name lots of folks but they do a great job and they help us quite a bit and then that last one the youth number we've had we have our own youth program that supports what United Way is leading for shelter beds for youth youth for us are 18 to 24 we don't take the 17 year olds but again they can come in in those 16 beds and get immediate placement Colonel tell me that 6,502 what does that number mean because obviously if you look at unique clients serve those with the permanent housing and those who progress to more positive the 6,502 okay so those are progressions off the street but not the permanent housing so permanent housing the 2018 is actually a positive outcome too so all the positive outcomes at transitions are 8,520 I always get asked about this and you all usually ask it so I just put it up here to save the question the story about everybody coming on buses I don't accept that at all I really don't and this has been consistent for 7 years almost the numbers fluctuate a little bit but generally predominantly Richland County period some Lexington about 10 percent 11 percent they drop once to 9 percent but it holds about 10 or 11 and then the other counties of South Carolina that are not mock or not Lexington I should say or Richland and in out of states about 10 it's about 10 percent do some out of state people come yes generally they've come back because their mother grew up here or they were children here they went to New York and the big dream didn't happen you can see the gender race and age numbers there and veterans were 9 percent question what Jennifer was talking so the travel program does y'all be focusing on that 28 percent or I was just wondering is there because I've always heard these numbers we've done it to a limited degree but the funding always runs out every month so and it stops so if there are more people and the family agrees we don't want to just randomly put people on buses we want some sort of family linkage at the other end we'll work that hard I'm excited that that's okay so we've asked the questions here this year I've got times moving on the outreach piece we do so Ms. Wilson asked about okay what do we do mental health wise so I put mental health and I put substance here these are self-admitted numbers upon entry into transitions so one of the pictures I want to paint for you is everyone at transitions isn't really doing well there's a lot of mental health issues there and there's a lot of substance issues and a lot of them have both so these are very high numbers so serious and persistent mental health is pretty much what these folks fall into they need medication for their schizophrenic bipolar serious depression so now the other sixty four sixty six percent have issues too they're been traumatized they're just not necessarily serious and persistent health and need medication they probably need counseling I've had people tell me that 90 plus percent of the people at transitions need some sort of psychiatric help so this is a focus and a snapshot so what are you getting for this and how are we going to change and do better next year we're going to help with the outreach we work with United Way on that but we do have a person who goes out to try to find the mental health we're chronically about 14 percent homeless so don't think that everybody in transitions at a higher level and all the chronic people are on the street that's that's a misrepresentation chronic folks will come into transitions and we actually house some of them but they are much much harder and a lot of it takes way way more time generally for them to adjust and overcome barriers great so first of all 34 percent mental health cases are those actual open cases of people who have mental health issues so they have issues and cases and cases okay but they are getting help I mean the good thing is they immediately must go to one of the providers to get help and so that's out of how many what's the unique number about 3,500 that walked in last year so we're talking about between mental health cases and substance cases one about a thousand people easily that's over a thousand but I'm just I don't want to try to paint a rosy picture here I mean this is hard it's illustrative of the challenge now I mean there's a lot of folks in there who need help the ACT teams have been mentioned they do a great job mercy they come in and help as well so we're trying to get the chronic folks the more serious persistent mental health pushed into a permanent housing solution immediately having a shelter bed is key because if you know where the person is you can work with them much easier if they're under a bridge somewhere it's really hard to find them and some of the folks are kind of easy to find if they're panhandling on main street but again there has to be some sort of willingness and that is a problem and at the end of the day the success stories that we're hearing today are great but we still have that one population that we all struggle with and we've got to come up with a solution and I'm with you and I support that but again you don't want the 2018 people on the streets too oh that's why because you'll be worse than my auntie see these yeah there but at the end of the day we know these folks are getting what they need and we're able to reach them but we got a group of folks who are resistant who are either resistant that's right or or just they're going to be that way and we've got to either the encouragement here is you do wear some of these people down the 14% that are in transitions right now are getting worn down in a positive sense it's like okay look I don't have to keep doing this and then they start taking their medicine and they start listening to the counselors and it starts to work it may take time everybody it's not an immediate solution for everyone so we've been pushing that and working that hard the veteran population we work extensively with the VA some cost figures there we're one of the best deals in town in terms of where to spend the night some costs Eau Claire Health Cooperative they save seven to eight million dollars a year in charge at the clinic that they run on transitions having stuff on site needs to better health care and easier access 60 to 70 tons a year of food that we get from Fort Jackson we get from USC Rawls Farm McIntyre Prodos that's food that would go in a landfill so again that is a cost savings to the community with that number as well volunteer hours we have lots of folks volunteering the transitions that is grown every year and then clients in our jobs program as well that's it any questions I think it's ideal for us to to say that that providers what you've given us this morning the larger picture though the hurdle where we where we have the necessary psychotropic until we sort of blanket triage care that is both justice related and psychotropically related until those relationships are sort of built in somewhere I read that the homeless are always going to be with us and we do a better job it's easy to say that and I mean very appreciate it Mr. White and I know Mr. Mayor you've mentioned we need to have a bigger conversation about what we as a city plan to do regarding the problem of aggression and what's happening I think we're all seeing it and as Wilson said every day we're getting things I'm calling law enforcement all the time in my office for situations that we're having happen at at Richmond Street but I will say that as we have this conversation and engaging our partners it's going to be important I know sometimes I've I've had to reach out to Craig and he put his outreach people out to you know contact people who are sleeping on porches and other things and they've been not always 100 successful but has been able to so the people have them come in and other things so as we talk about the bigger issue and come up with some solutions maybe engaging there's free outreach a little bit more with helping us get some of those folks in the system or making it very clear that you know what's been happening to this point is no longer going to be tolerated in the city just as we close out I wanted to say and thank you and thank you all I continue I know we've had some great conversations the last couple of weeks of just working together even more closely to provide some type of a seamless approach to dealing with these challenges but we've appreciated your partnership and Matt's back there somewhere too we're working through this Sarah thank you as well you know when you're dealing with you know this incredibly challenging realities of the human condition it requires a really thoughtful and compassionate response that that can seem difficult at the time and we pledge a good part in this but it's going to require us working that much harder that much harder don't ever want y'all think we don't appreciate the hard work you guys do let's all step up our game that much more thank you thank you thank you you're all welcome let's head let's see well I was going to I'm not going to try to top what you just said but I wanted to add that Sarah Fosett is with us today she is the new executive director for the United Way as of a year ago now though so I do want to make a little bit of a she's right but making sure everybody all of councils had a chance to thank you Missy we have another big discussion today I know it was requested by council that we go ahead and at least put on the agenda for the work session there used to be some time to talk through our fiscal year 2018-2019 accommodations and hospitality tax grant funding recommendations I think the discussion that you are wanting to have during the work session is probably a little bit bigger than just the actual spreadsheets which will appear on your agenda tonight for a council vote Didi Fanning is with us she's your grant coordinator and community project liaison Didi's worked really hard as she got through the process with the committee and the committees worked really hard as they always do but Didi does have some observations recommendations guidance that she can give today or we can you know just really take councils lead on what you want to talk about at this point and she can time in as you speak if you have time I know Mr. Recommend Mr. Volume all of those had some suggestions and I'm not sure if this is the time you wanted to get into any of that if you want to hear from Didi first I think we should hear from Didi first okay and I'm gonna work I'd be glad to hear from Didi first but I'd like to hear from Mrs. Sussman okay to explain the finance budget certainly how she came up with it yes good afternoon what I mainly wanted to speak about the current process that we have in place and there was some questions that you discussed and moving forward and how we do that I won't get into a whole lot of detail because I don't think we need to work to as we move into the new year to go over we do have things in place the statement of assurance that it must be eligible expenditures that we use for the organizations so to go over things as we go into place with the recommendations once they're approved for the new year it will be a process that we go through um what I have up here is just a breakdown of the slide that we presented previously with the committee process we have the city guidelines that we currently use and of course the state guidelines that we currently use I really wanted to answer any questions that you because we had discussed it but I wanted to get some direction on specific questions that you had for me and the direction that you wanted to go you had discussed organizations over the 50,000 mark do you have any questions for me that I could answer and give you some direction on what we currently have in place and what we held on over before that's I have hoped that we would be able to come up with a new way a better way of doing the H-TAC in particular of the A-TAC is much simpler but there's two agencies involved in it but I'm not sure that's the will of the council one of the key points that I think would have made this whole process easier if it was what would be to change the way the agencies receive their funds and how they have to account for the funds but understanding from my friends in the finance department that they want to have all of the munition sent to them and if we're going to continue that and if we have to continue that because of audits and everything else I think we're going to have to recognize that Deedee's going to need some more help it was a two-person shot before now it's a one-person shot and if we're going to ask her to go through every receipt or 10 gallons of gas or everybody that's doing this I think I think we need to give her some support the other thing is Mr. Rickman wanted to look at the requirements for for reimbursements and this is this is off our basically off our website eligibility of the hospitality grant grant guidelines and I look through it and if the will of the council is that we've got to continue the way we've done it I think this is not a bad set of guidelines my biggest beef I think would be that it boils down to it's what the reviewing person thinks should be funded reimburse rather than a set thing because it says examples of generally ineligible expenses and then at this the whole lot of things and then it several places in the guidelines say that each individual agency is looked at different and so they have the I reckon it would be Deedy or Deedy and and somebody else would have the authority to say well this is an acceptable expense and this is not an acceptable expense the one that gets me the most is the rentals examples of generally ineligible expenses are rentals stages, tents, tables and chairs maybe tables and chairs I could see but if you're going to fund an event that's going to have a performer and you have to have a stage looks to me like that would be an eligible expense so if we're going to have if we're going to keep the strenuous reimbursements that we have then I think we need to look at a couple of those another one that got me was ineligible expense would be maintenance and upkeep of the profit well that is cleaning safe and I don't see how we could use that as an ineligible expense and Phil say that it's eligible under the cleaning safe three of our I'm a little frustrated I don't I don't like the way that the money has been divided up this year and I've sat down for two or three days and went through it and I couldn't you're going to have to be better that there there are pieces here there and yonder that I could pick at but overall unless we give them more money I don't see a whole lot of differences that I would be able to suggest on re-dividing the money in some other ways I wouldn't on the ATACS however if you want to talk about ATACS too at the same time my understanding was the ATACS was to be divided 85% to the convention for the experience of Columbia and 15% to the Lake Murray and that's not the way it's divided three other modes to change that back so that they do have 85-15 split and that the whatever surplus is split 85-15 we went through this debate last year and I think that we should stay with 85-15 I don't have a long history in this thing but that's what I have been told that it's always supposed to be 85-15 that's what we use last year we did have an increase for the committee for ATACS this year and we can't go over what the organization has requested not talking about the surplus part of it but just the original what the committee would recommend so we'll be able to go unless they increase their request that's one thing we have to make sure of when we consider that 85-15 or that we have done in the past the hospitality guidelines the eligible and ineligible expenditure expenditures listed on there those are what we have used in the past from what council approved but it's been a very long time since those were reviewed again so if there were changes that we wanted to the council wanted to make to those we would need to do that and organizations would be held responsible to abide by that going into the new year well I looked at the list of ineligible expenses and I agree with most of them except that maybe the rentals and the rest of the general was staging that staging and or and expenses I can see that's not being eligible but staging the fact that the staging is what I think it means you know the puncturing of the bench staging all of the ineligible and again that was that was decided by previous council if I'm if I recall correctly it may have been 2013-2014 when all of these were approved at that time and that's what we followed yeah I mean I think we need to revisit how we distribute I think the requirements I think that you know one of the requirements is supposed to be that 990s and everything are update in my audit I grabbed a handful of them and that is not the case I think that we are reimbursing on items we shouldn't and that's a problem and that's why I don't feel like we can just leave it open and then have to go audit on the back end we've got to re-examine the way we're distributing money and we've got groups that have money in the bank we have groups that have other sources of bank but we continue to increase there so it limits our ability to provide adequate funding for other groups that are trying to grow we've been talking about this since the day this came out and it gets to a point where a certain point where you need to be standing on your own feet not completely but when I look at this and I looked at some of these reimbursables I was very put away that I'm paying for somebody's Mountain Dew and they're toilet paper that is not to me an expense that should be paid for with hospitality money this is the idea to drive events and people into town you know signage and things like that are proved there are other communities using this money in a different way West Columbia allows a new restaurant to hold their money until they can pay for the grease trap a way to attract people there so they can create more money in the bank that's an interesting thing but at the same time we've got groups I went through I mean this is one packet of somebody's I went through and look at I got so many stickies on it I can't and I don't understand why we would reimburse for some of this I think we have to take a serious look at how we fund all the groups what the time frame is what their sources are what what are they spending the money on what are they spending their other money on you know to me if you're a non-profit you're a non-profit and we're supposed to be encouraging and there's a lot of somebody's calling me they must have heard me on the news on the microphone when the when the committee considers these they do they do go through all of those things that are included in the application to look at who can be self-sustainable and of course they all need the money but who is self-sustainable who's not with allowing new groups in making sure all areas are covered and being diverse and all of the things the attendance the what it brings back to the community everything that they have to compare and try to do that the best way that they can and I think they do a really good job at that and they in the recommendations for this year you will see some that were decreased that they felt were self-sustainable and to give ring for others that were new groups coming in and I think we as a city probably take the blame for a bulk of it because we've allowed some of these expenses to be reimbursed in the past we've got to come up with a better system we need to make sure that we're increasing that pot and that we're driving people to increase that because they're areas of town that we are not supporting as strong as others and there are reasons for it but it also there's also parts of town that are thriving and at the same time they're reaping the benefits and we're not being able to spread it out you know I don't want to get into every detail but it's it's pretty shocking story when you take the time to go through and look at this and that's why I'm really concerned about just giving the money you know on a two-year cycle and we don't funnel through it obviously we need to fix our system on our end as well so I mean it's a two-fold and we've allowed some of it to happen but I also think we got to tighten up the criteria I mean if you're a group that's got a bundle of money in the bank then we shouldn't be funding you at the same level you've got other sources of income we need to fund certain programs and and so forth I get that but at the same time it was never and created and meant to just provide a cushion for everybody it's supposed to help continue to grow and we need to to spread it out I appreciate the committee's hard work I think a lot of what I'm talking about lies on our end of the table and I think the majority of the expenses for the main ones and my concerns as well would be the programs like the Clean and Safe where it may get more into the gray area the majority of the organization is funded that it's for media advertising information it's more clear cut than it would be for the clean and safe and operations of those programs that we that we need to get a clear idea what we need to do and I am working on some things to make it a little bit easier for the the organizations to access a form that they can fill out when they make the request so that it's not just turned in they're doing this you know just for some organizations once a year when they have their festival and they they're asking for grants from other places as well so it's it's having to get with them and remind them and help them but working on one thing I am working on is making that more accessible to them for instance online so that they can get that as well as speaking to me or whoever here or to have guidance on that and just make it a better process the best that we can Edie is there on that no one anything that would the amount of money that I carried over I think this is what you're asking then the amount of money that I carried over and put in the request of them put that percentage here and how does that percentage that I'm spending that there are you speaking of funds that they they're requesting carried forward in the next year we usually do not have many of those if we do it's usually for a special reason and they will send a letter and explain in that whether it be I know we've had one before that there was a change and who was over the entire program and there were some things that fell through the cracks so they asked that they could carry that forward to start the process again for the event that it was but for different reasons and they'll usually copy council if not the letter that they send me then I will send to you as well but with an explanation but it's a very small amount of groups that I'm talking about I'm not talking about I think he's talking about like organizations that their event is so successful they actually make money and then they set aside money but then we also give them money and so I think that's what he's talking about so to Ed's question do we have some way in our application or are we asking for what monies they already have that aside for this so that we know if they do still need to we do we do we have that is one of the things we see in our application and that is something that the committee will see as well and they will cover that with the organizations as they can in any of their presentations so it will show that for each application I let me I'm going back to my usual observations and I still don't understand how the committee continues to I guess not consider the smaller organizations worthy of increased funding I'm going to point out two in particular but there are more the North Columbia Business Association at Eau Claire Community Council and I'm pretty much agreeing with Daniel some of these points one the intent is that you don't you're not supposed to so totally survive off of these funds and that if that continues to happen with this larger organizations continuing to get the same large amount of money the smaller organizations will never get anything they don't have and then they don't experience the opportunity to grow and I think we need to take another look at that and it's a question of how long are you going to be operating off of these dollars if that continues new organizations can't get in line can't get to the table also I don't know I'll throw this out there I'm looking at several of the minority organizations that they don't tend to get anything I think the committee ought to take a look at that the intent is that if we want to see other areas of the city show their wares then they ought to have an opportunity to participate in these dollars that they can use to attract organizations attract people and also businesses look at areas when they're considering an investment as to what's going on what's happening and whether or not that's going to be a pleasant for them pleasant place for them to invest until we consider that then it's the same old same old it was just saying to me that it has to be about equity it's got to be it's got to be absolutely it has to be a new business new organizations come in and I'm sure all of us around the table got organizations that we could perhaps look at it as what you just said but it's it's it has to be an issue of and how are we going to the organizations that's the bottom line we just we got to start doing business that's true and I think that's that's the bottom line hey you know as I reflected just auditing and what I've come to realize is that a lot of our issue is right here at the city and it's not that we've got to to have stronger guidelines with ours I mean you just read the guidelines through your beverage and how are these people getting reimbursed I mean we've gotten complacent or more comfortable with folks and I think you're going to see a reduction of what's reimbursable by us following our own guideline but we need to follow it to be fair in the system at the same time I think we we have to improve our guidelines I think we need to look at all aspects because there's a certain point you know there's been a lot of discussion over the years even five six years back about you know your funding groups you know where are they spending their dollars you know and and we're investing so heavily in one group but yet you know we're unable to to help grow others I mean I remember when this was pushed by the arts community this was a push to help grow tourism arts and other things that became a funding it I don't think it was ever meant to be a permanent funding right but there are also groups that that contribute so much by what they do to help grow that we need to continue funding so it's a fine balance I think what we have for guidelines and I think our process here is got to be updated and fixed and I feel like a lot of it is on our side of the fence and we need to send that message clearly because I think people have been able to get reimbursed for stuff they've asked for it we've just done it that's a problem because that's taken dollars out of other people's mouths well I hope that when you made the analogy that the hope of being reimbursed for toilet taping I hope you just kidded no I'm not let me ask this that'd be a dubious question if an organization has a shows a surplus this year when they come to the table do we take that under consideration and against their request or do we totally look at their request and not not make a decision based on surplus surplus of these dollars it's taken into consideration but what we have it's also taken into consideration with the all of the other aspects seen was mentioned that everything is taken for each organization all of those are taken if an organization is putting away money because they have a capital campaign that's a whole different discussion but when an organization is putting away money and they're they're meant to think that we continue to increase it and we've gone from providing money for one one aspect to another aspect to me that's an issue and then when that aspect gets to a point where you're paying for expenses that they're unqualified they may they may look minor now but when you add it up over the course of the year and you add it by the multiple groups that's the money that we could increase you know and you've got organizations that you know may have had some not great successes but at the same time I think we have an obligation to try to help them grow you know it's just it is a fine line I get it but I think we're at a point where this has been around long enough that we probably need to to have a hard look at how we distribute it is that fine and I think that's one of the reasons we asked to put it on a work session but even today I don't think we can do all we need to I agree because we need to really I mean we have these number of years of experience we probably can get into it and maybe retool some of the guidelines based on what we've seen but I would say two points to what Daniel said one thing is that that's the reason why Howard thought about a tiered approach because it's hard to compare a five-point association with an Eau Claire community calendar you know they both put on a day event but they're they're different Eau Claire community calendar is that where five points is five points shouldn't be penalized because they've been successful but in the same token Eau Claire shouldn't be penalized because they don't have the years of experience so I think that you have to look at them and maybe to lump them together so that you've got groups or maybe level playing field competing so whether we look at Howard's proposal if we can or not or maybe look at what we want to do to address that that would be one thing the second thing I would say for that though is my one little caveat on people setting money aside is because of the way we do our funding and depending on when someone's event is sometimes they can't rely upon whether or not we're going to fund them and at what level and so I do think that we need to encourage groups to get to the point where they're setting aside the money for future years and the question is how much is that seed money and are they setting aside $30,000 and using it for other projects or are they putting aside 10,000 to do their contracts because they never know what we're going to fund I think we've got to look at that in a different situation and ask the real questions as to what they're doing with the money I think we need to we need to encourage them to be financially savvy about saving money for the future event but we also don't need people to set aside their money expecting our money so that's something I think we need to add Yeah, I don't have a problem with that and you know the capital projects you know I think we all understand how that works but if it's these dollars if you're sitting on it then someone that's new to the table is not going to be able to get any money but it's not sitting on it so say the same thing if it's a surplus and you're in line for additional dollars well, but I think you're saying surplus there are two different things you didn't spend it you didn't spend what you requested last year Okay, that's different what I think what Daniel was mentioning and correct me if I'm wrong is so again using not to not to put the but using five points we know that you know if it doesn't rain they're successful and so they will rightfully still set aside some money so that they can still ensure that's that's that's all that's so that they can get things up and running for the next year because of look at you know when we start when we allocate the money that they're they're planning already for March and so they can't wait to June or July to say okay what's the money going to fund us so it's why is money coming from the money inside you know we've had organizations in the past that had to put money aside and then we give them money they weren't looking for they were expecting more and they have to cancel the event or they're coming to us because they went ahead and had the event and had a deficit and they're coming to us asking us to pay for that and so I think it's wise for them to set money aside so that's different than having a surplus where you know they had dollars and they didn't spend so I think we need to look at that the two different aspects yeah I don't I don't I don't argue that I agree with you but I think we ought then to to consider the circumstances rain funding but that's understandable but but if you know for some reason you you had a successful event you and you did not spend the dollars that you requested if it's $30,000 then that $30,000 that's sitting in the bank ought to be considered next year ought to be looked at they won't get the 30,000 dollars they won't get that they don't get the 30,000 unless they can spend it the money I'm talking about is from different revenue and when you other income other income that's when that too you have to take that in account of what you're given and when somebody continues to grow that that line item but yet their mission is is strictly driven for a certain purpose in a certain thing we got to look at all the aspects of the organization and you know and it came up with one of the big organizations before where and that director's no longer here I'm not gonna say it is but you know they were making a quarter of a million dollars a year and you got you got a question at that point you know when you're paying salaries like that do you do you really need this money because I mean that's not what it was designed for give the ball to me a couple of things number one you got to remember that the hospitality tax is designed to be given to groups to bring tourists into the city tourists most of the time tourists is considered somebody that's going 50 miles our guidelines say people from outside to set the limits come in here so some of these groups that are getting these it's a long walk from here to West Columbia I'm out but you got that's the intent and the second thing is a little uncomfortable for me to be talking about what I'm talking about because John's sitting behind me back here and the fact that his yeah his idea I support that John's idea was to have have a base funding for the big groups like CMA I think John says we need to have a world-class museum which we have we need to have a world-class historic buildings which we have we need to have a world-class Philharmonic which we have and so he was putting those into a tier maybe we ought to ask John to speak about his thing but that's how I came up with the tier is to get the base agencies up there and treat them a little differently than the people that are going to need a little bit more help but at the same time some of us some of us we we discussed it but we never came back to it and and uh I'm totally in favor of that yeah I'm going to tell you about two the tier concept but I'm also in favor of making sure it's ever day as we discuss it if we got a tier here what about the second tier what about what about what about those organizations who are very very close to making something happen and they and the funding is not there and there's not quote unquote a savings account that is already established but nothing is but none of this is guaranteed yeah that's here I mean we have the last two years now so that way you can be flexible when you observe certain circumstances with organizations and certain events and certain areas of the city so we buy into this we buy into that first tier is that second tier those unknown those folks that we have not done that's the third tier on my proposal look the first tier were the big big people that are doing things that clearly qualify for the h-tax and do it year after year but they need the continued funding from the h-tax that they're helping generate they're bringing people in and generating the second tier would be the groups that are a little bit smaller they may need some some financial I think it's going to be a real asset help as far as management of their funds they might have a fiscal agent but they're still eligible all of it has to be eligible for the h-tax the third group I was going to suggest they set aside or you groups that would be doing innovative things and I noticed that the committee of this year did put several things in there that were I would consider innovative and then the fourth tier would be the capital projects and we have around five hundred thousand dollars there may be more now since we went up on CMA we have around five hundred thousand dollars that are circulating in and out and as we roll somebody off did we roll the adventure off this year is that the one the capital project yeah we rolled adventure capital project off at 125,000 I believe that would go back into the pot and we could take we could do the council could agree on the next one of the line and as the Centennial Park rolls off next year we could have a next one coming in line I don't have a problem with the tier process what I have a problem is is that I don't think it we have to have the receipts turned in because to me what I've seen proves that the system ain't working correctly and until that's done you can't just let it let it go out yeah yeah I'm bowing to the financial geniuses yeah I don't think you're speaking inconsistent because we're going to know that we're talking about oversight responsibilities and obviously trying to be as efficient as possible and making sure we get some things done we got a lot of organizations doing a whole lot of good work I mean some a lot more mature and larger and send an own some that will need our help crucially that is going to require much more involved discussion that we have time for the day we need if we're going to if we're going to deal with it and it's probably the perfect time to be being this year to to deal with it over the long term I've still got a digest so I think that like gave D.D. a heart attack when I told I was I was unready to act tonight and some of you have expressed the same unreadiness on the digest is a little bit more but but the larger discussion is when we have to have yes with and the focus on on doing our due diligence making sure that folks easily respond to the kind of a map yes and making sure that we're focusing on on equity and equitable distribution yes making sure we're able to focus on not just the year to year issues but also these some of these cornerstone opportunities that give us a chance to really make some leads forward how we make these significant capital investments that some that will only come up every every several years but it's a it's important for us to recognize that all these groups have a significant value let's figure out how we can do it within the the limited means that we have which I will say maybe limited but it's still substantial I mean so we're we're we're spending millions of dollars a year so that that ought not be the value that ought not be understated sir mr. Duboff it sounds like we we have a kind of consensus that we need to study the tier process and we have a a consensus that we need to get get more control over our reimbursement process but we do need to have the receipts the one point that we I would like to clarify is the the proposal also had a multi-year funding a two-year funding that we would true up each year to give groups unless they like the Nickelodeon that are having events all the time an opportunity to know that they they wouldn't be dependent on us voting tonight because the budget year is going to start July one they would have some certainty of funds going forward it would be like a city or a county doing a two-year budget are you suggesting then that that they apply for two years of funding you could do it that way are you the way I had envisioned it was that's a good process that's a good word how do you clarify what we envisioned didn't envision envision the way I envisioned is it would be a one-year funding and then you would have a percentage of that maybe 75% of that you could count on going into the next year and then the council at the end when we're doing it in June we could we could verify sometimes you have to verify yeah yeah see you would have a base that you would know that you'd be getting but then we would you'd have a guarantee that we would add a year on every year so it would roll it would be a rolling amount that we would control every year and that you would do that that I wouldn't I'd make sure that somehow we still don't give the appearance of a guarantee again yeah none of it is guaranteed yeah well there would be caveats in there as they are on a couple of cities and the state that do multiple year budget don't have a problem with that I thought we were going to we would deal with that model before we sat down with that we're pretty close on something that I think we can have but I don't think you can hold this because you've already had the committee meet on these I think that you would yeah I don't know I mean you need the set of time and because of the talk about the past year you need the set of time say when you're going to discuss it when we're going to prove something so it could be in place or subsequent years I think we're talking we're talking about 18, 19 as soon as I still have unreadiness about these I want to make sure yeah yeah yeah I have some thoughts we're still going to be about unreadiness with all of this so yeah can as we move forward on this process Ms. Wilson yes can we put a subcommittee together to work with Mr. Lanzo and Edie and others to look at examples of what's not acceptable in our current guidelines that have been tweaked but also create a better system for us of tracking yes the subcommittee of council and Ms. Lanzo and staff and Edie and whoever else needs to be in but I do think we need to have a a revision of our process and if we're going to build it into the tier I think it's very critical that we do that Didi yes sir this discussion is about us not you you did a good job you stepped it into the good job thank you to Garvin the ball or well I mean since we're really talking about for next year's application start we need to have it finished before Christmas right so that it can have plenty of time to be published and circulated you'll be a lot of content I'm not ready to vote on it but I was just saying we're getting hold of this up for that no no I agree I completely agree so you can't just be met at me Didi I'm not I'm sorry I'm sorry that was for this evening not approved this evening yes I would like to know Didi I'm sorry Mr. Mayor I'm sorry Mr. Dine had something I think Mr. Stevenson was asking I just want to clarify it sounds like y'all are not going to vote on H-tax tonight but we'll H-tax something to pick up tonight you know for both of us for both of us for both of us for both of us for both of them off tonight you know need to be here tonight not unless you're planning on bringing us pizza and beer well I can always do that I'll be very glad to do that we're using both well it's not very often I show up on the the agenda of the council which is no the H-tax or H-tax no either one does she have other issues on the agenda? there are uncomfortable issues on the agenda might be fun my question just was for Dede and or John I didn't see the application so I wasn't sure I know in years past we've had so creative suggestions on how you know people are promoting the increase of the pot people eating out and other things I've heard heard that as much recently so I didn't know if organizations were kind of getting away from that but to to Howard's point about increasing the pot we really do need to push that as something that we're looking to see in that's what they're doing so I don't know if you saw it this year y'all seeing that people or groups are getting away from that or where are we on that? we do we do always that is where the money comes so we encourage that be part of the entire process that may be in their event and and that will be asked by the community to have their presentation and also from information we've seen in the application we ask the amount of food and beverage that was sold and we're having three years here that we can see that's getting more 10 months getting more even better sales if they're growing or if they're not growing that is one of the things that is one of the things that is one of the things that is one of the things that is one of the things that is one of the things yeah but no like in years past like like the valet would do a thing that you know if you ate out you got something and so it encouraged people if you're buying a valet ticket also to eat out and it it pushed that encouragement and I hadn't seen or heard that as much recently so I was just wondering are y'all seeing it because I'm not reading applications like I used to actually yes we're seeing it a lot from the organizations that count on this money for their operations for the season it's ongoing that you would have a patron's table in the lobby many different events telling people where to to go to eat make helping them make reservations they pass out surveys so we see that pretty regularly and this year as a committee knowing that this was going to be sort of a a real topic of discussion for council as a committee we asked DD to give you our procedures and policies that we used as a committee so it didn't look like we were just making arbitrary decisions but that we actually were following a process and this year we had 20 new applications but not an increase in the dollars as is a committee we'd asked for a percentage increase year after year after year based on the growth or the decrease of those revenues themselves and that hasn't come in but we think truthfully that the city is doing a really fine job in meeting the spirit of the legislation in helping arts organizations historic organizations community enrichment organizations to grow and develop and this year we were able to give seed money to several small organizations that hadn't had that before and seed money for us with a limited amount of dollars was really small but addressing some one of the things that Mr. Reckman had had said was do we look at reserve accounts if we looked at reserve accounts there'd be absolutely no way that as a committee we could in good conscience be able to fund the Gankock club for their police support but every year that money comes right out out of the HDACS pocket so you know we do try to look at it every way we try to look at small organizations we try to give them seed money and some of the small organizations that get a certain dollar amount from the committee go back to council and get an increase so when we see them again the coming year we give them an increase over what we had the previous year not what they had gotten with the council increase so it gets very muddy in that way and we also know in reimbursables with these organizations that we stress they can have them for marketing they can have them for security and they can have them for talent and in some instances which has to be discussed with excuse me with Deedy would be for a marketing position so we know how the reimbursables work I don't do the reimbursement I think part of it was just about practice when it comes we really do see these organizations do the best that they can even to the point where a lot of the committee members attend organizational events and if we don't see that that organization is even collecting zip codes that's discussed at the committee and that's a simple way just to see who's showing up and who's not or we had one organization that was promoting an event for the community but was doing the event was proposing to do the event so far outside the community that one of our questions was how do you propose to transport people what what have you thought about for transportation and they really hadn't thought about that so it was something we said please go back to your drawing board so we really do review these applications in great depth and trying to make it easier for you guys to make decisions in determination you guys do you guys do great work and I think you know again we're talking about a positive tension I think it is there's a whole lot of good to be done a whole lot of good being done and I just think every every it's often I'm a chef it's every couple of years every several years you got to go back and make sure we're doing exactly what we want to do and sometimes house is priority strong as long as the spirit of what we with our legislation intended in a good shape but we got to go back and make sure that some of the accountability issues and the long-awaiting issues some of the ongoing equity or regional issues that we're addressing one of those things in the infancy of the process was the staging that Mr. Duvall brought up it was at the time when there were so few festivals and the city had a city stage that the festivals were encouraged to use the city stage mobile rather than the mobile stage rather than the red one so historically that's where that you've never seen the trailer one wall if I was waiting for you all to finish this portion are you as we do need to transition session real soon I thought this is the last thing we have something else this is the last thing I think Mr. Duvall just as a part of this item I wanted Missy Kaufman to talk about your h-task budget going forward correct this one the 1819 the June 4th let's get those questions since we got to go to the second session yeah I have to well I can wait I reckon are you sure I think it would miss it recognizing that our our budget is based off some pretty aggressive predictions predictions I guess well this is just for the house of talent I know I gotcha we're gonna have another clip we are okay that's it predictions I should have said versus predictions I just one quick thing I wanted to take the opportunity Mr. Mayor but all of your colleagues are chatting so I'll wait I need I need good behavior that's okay it's an introduction so ma'am I think I have introduced Pamela to most of you individually I've been trying to Pamela's hand up Pamela Johnson is our internal auditor yay and she's been on board with us for several weeks now hello Pamela two months okay two months and she's doing a phenomenal job comes from what part does that say by whale okay that was Fort Worth exceptional yes exceptional addition we're glad to have her back home and she has jumped right in to help us I know that I really wanted to make sure all of you knew she was here because this is a position I know all of y'all have been you know particularly interested in us having time yeah yeah time welcome welcome welcome thank you Pamela so yes sir we are I'm going to be a part of our all right yeah can we get a can we get a motion and I think a move amendment says I don't know people are longer than that a move can we go under the executive session for discussion negotiations and then should pose contract for arrangements pursuant to 30-4-782 capital edge Alvin Glenn great increase from Magic ICE USA the limit canal health care discussion of involvement of an employee pursuant to 782 municipal court receipt of legal advice where the legal advice relates to a pin in threatened or potential claim Brinkman versus city of Columbia Walkamaw Avenue Speed Month city of Columbia versus Alphalera's discussion of matters related to proposed a location or expansion of services to encourage a location or expansion of industries or other business pursuant to 782 diversified development juicy spec building in 1649 culinary training program and wait a minute one more receipt of legal advice pertaining to threaten a potential claim stadium Sedum Avenue second in discussion see none of them with the previous question part of our ride Mr. Rickerman aye Mr. McDowell yes Mr. Mulvall aye Mr. Vines aye Mr. Davis aye Mr. Evans aye