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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2024-03-19 Finance Committee Summary MinutesFINANCE COMMITTEE SUMMARY MINUTES Page 1 of 12 Regular Meeting March 19, 2024 The Finance Committee of the City of Palo Alto met on this date in the Community Meeting Room and by virtual teleconference at 5:30 PM. Present In Person: Burt (Chair), Lauing, Veenker Present Remotely: None Absent: None CALL TO ORDER Chair Burt called the meeting to order. The clerk called roll with three present. PUBLIC COMMENT There were no requests to speak. Action Items 1. Review Council Referral on Recommended Funding Levels of the Human Services Resource Allocation Process (HSRAP) and Other Grants in the General Fund 1) Jasmina Bojic provided details on the United Nations Association Film Festival. She provided bookmarks to be passed around. She addressed the committee about special screenings they have year around. She provided flyers. They are asking for $35,000 to fund this. They are alto asking the committee to allocate $20,000 extra to the October film festival for the ongoing screening events. She also addressed their archives with 10,000 documentaries stored in public storage which costs $700 per month. They asked for the committee’s help with that, as well. Assistant City Clerk Kiely Nose explained that this item was a continuation from a referral discussed in December with the prior Finance Committee who had asked for a deeper dive on the topic. She presented slides discussing the Council referral, questions for consideration and recommendation. Human Services Manager Minka Van Def Zwaag explained the HSRAP process. SUMMARY MINUTES Page 2 of 12 Finance Committee Meeting Summary Minutes: 3/19/2024 Vice Mayor Ed Lauing asked if the entire HRC frequently or infrequently make changes to the recommendations. Human Services Manager Van Def Zwaag answered it depends on the makeup of the HRC. Vice Mayor Lauing surmised their assignments were talking the amount and how it is calculated and the criteria they should look at in making these decisions. Human Services Manager Van Def Zwaag explained they were looking to know if there is a way the committee wants to fold the other grants and commitments the City has with other nonprofits into some kind of process and what reporting procedures they require. Assistant City Clerk Nose added the original referral was to allocate 1 percent of the City’s general fund to “HSRAP” which begs the question of what is considered HSRAP. She outlined some projects that might be considered “Human Services” and asked if they would be factored into that 1 percent. Those areas do not have the application process as the HSRAP process specifically. Human Services Manager Van Def Zwaag added several of those other grants and contracts are not managed by her operation of Human Services. Council Member Vicki Veenker referenced packet pages seven and eight which compares the increased spend that the detailed chart bears out to the base case long range financial forecast. She asked for information about ballparks comparisons on that. Assistant City Clerk Nose confirmed that in the long range financial forecast there were two alternative scenarios presented aside from the base case. She described those two scenarios. The base case is the best guess at where they think things will be. That is the direction Council gave Staff in terms of the scenario to use for financial planning and the most accurate comparison for FY2025 calculations. Council Member Veenker referenced the numbers on the bottom of the chart on attachment A and wanted to know what the two far right columns represent. Assistant City Clerk Nose answered it only includes Avenidas and PACCC because they were the only ones previously included in the grant process that was then removed. The others were subsequent services that have been added at various times not through a grant process but through various Council actions. Council Member Veenker questioned if they were to take this to 1 percent of the budget for fiscal year 2025, it would be almost a 50 percent increase. Comparing to just HSRAP, it is a 300 percent increase. She remembered that there were projected deficits for a few years and then it switches away from that. She assumed once they get past those first few years that it would shift. She pointed out the fiscal resource impact in the staff report that stated if they did up the SUMMARY MINUTES Page 3 of 12 Finance Committee Meeting Summary Minutes: 3/19/2024 grant monies that there would be additional staff resources. She asked if there is a ballpark on how much that would be. Assistant City Clerk Nose stated it just depends on what would be enveloped in qualifying expenses. Regarding the deficit, it depends on what happens five years from now. She stated the additional staff resources would depend on the orders of magnitude and discussed those scenarios. City Manager Ed Shikada added if the number of recipients was accompanied by performance requirements, there would be more grantees that may be subject to that level of oversight in addition to the operation of the grant program. Human Services Manager Van Def Zwaag interjected if there is a thinking of folding some other programs into the HSRAP process, the issue is some of the grants with nonprofits do not fold into the current HSRAP priority of needs. They are doing a Human Services needs assessment and she hopes to see their assessment of the needs in the community at the end of that process. The ability to set up and manage completely separate grant programs is a consideration of staff impact. Chair Burt asked if Palo Alto Community Childcare was part of HSRAP until 2016. Human Services Manager Van Def Zwaag stated they both were and explained how it was an awkward fit. She added Project Sentinel was in HSRAP until the early 2000s. Chair Burt asked how many dollars PACCC received when it was in HSRAP. Human Services Manager Van Def Zwaag answered PACCC and Avenidas were each getting a little more than $400,000. The money was taken out of HSRAP and put into direct contract services. Chair Burt commented those partners provided critical senior and childcare services the City supports. Human Services Manager Van Def Zwaag agreed stating that is why it makes sense to have them direct service providers. Chair Burt asked if Council has reviewed the criteria HRC uses. Human Services Manager Van Def Zwaag said the criteria they are using is 99 percent generic criteria used in all RFPs that has been tweaked. She did not think just the evaluation criteria has gone to Council. Chair Burt wanted a better understanding of the criteria HRC uses and he struggled with how to reconcile the Council role and certain things they say are values they place on providers in the community that do not fit within the HSRAP criteria. Another issue is when they have recommendations by the UAC, Planning Commission or Architectural Review Board, there are SUMMARY MINUTES Page 4 of 12 Finance Committee Meeting Summary Minutes: 3/19/2024 recommendations to the Council that are often aligned with Staff recommendations but often with certain differences. The Council listens to Staff and the advisory body and then makes decisions. In the case of Public Art, there are a couple of anomalies where that advisory body feels like they have the final decision-making authority. That poses an important question of what to do. Human Services Manager Van Def Zwaag’s reaction to that would be multifold. She was interested in there being a greater look at the priority of needs. If Council wants to have that discussion with Human Services or the HRC, that conversation could be had. She thought the challenge was that the HRC and Staff is operating under the guidelines as they are currently set up. The challenge for herself and her colleague’s relationship with the nonprofits is when these one-offs happen because then it is a feeling of that could be folded into HSRAP and either there is a choice by the nonprofit to go to Council directly or sometimes there is a situation in which there is no affinity to the HRC’s decision. If there is concern about the evaluation criteria, there should be a conversation with that and encourage if an organization is providing a service that is within the priority of needs of HSRAP to say there is a process for that and encourage them to go through HSRAP. Chair Burt said that is why he was going through this on a couple of angles with one being evaluating the criteria. With the Council being in the dark on the criteria HRC uses, they do not have a voice. Human Services Manager Van Def Zwaag said that has only been through the last three to four HSRAP cycles because the HRC always used to come to the Finance Committee, provide their thinking on it, have a conversation with finance and then it got in the budget book and went to Council. Now it is directly in the budget book after the vetting of the Human Relations Commission. Chair Burt stated that addresses another thing he wondered about in that with many of their boards and commissions they have not had the joint meetings they used to try to schedule so that joint meeting could either be the joint meeting of the Council and HRC or could just return to what they used to do of HRC coming to the Finance Committee to have a discussion. Human Services Manager Van Def Zwaag commented that would include a lot of the information that she gives to the HRC when they make a decision. They get a copy of all the applications and evaluation criteria. Vice Mayor Lauing thought it was time to re-evaluate the criteria. That could happen at their suggestion at the HRC subcommittee or with the Finance Committee. Human Services Manager Van Def Zwaag stated they could express some values and they could go back and see how that plays out within the current criteria. Vice Mayor Lauing gave some examples of some of the ways they could re-evaluate the criteria. SUMMARY MINUTES Page 5 of 12 Finance Committee Meeting Summary Minutes: 3/19/2024 Human Services Manager Van Def Zwaag said at the next HSRAP process they take performance into account from the previous cycle. Vice Mayor Lauing thought there should always be an override but that they could cap the total amount per organization someone gives. They can add more to it if they want to or pull out certain types of organizations they want to deal with. Chair Burt stated there are only a few times a year where they have a heavy load in finance and the rest has a lot of room. They do not want to get up against the budget period or get in a period when they are doing a deep dive on utility rates and related things. He opined when they do not do joint meetings, they lose touch. This goes into the annual agenda planning where they have light periods in their agendas and then they have heavy periods. He advocated doing a calendar looking at the ebbs and flows and see which things are discretionary and put them in the light periods. He would be interested in going back to having Human Services Manager Van Def Zwaag and HRC representatives come to the Finance Committee to have a conversation about that. Human Services Manager Van Def Zwaag agreed stating at that point the applications were already out and received. The HSRAP application goes out in December with applications received in January. It is around October that the HRC considers the priority of needs. They hope to hear back from the consultant in the October-November period. Vice Mayor Lauing surmised if they are going to have evaluation of criteria, it would need to be done by November of this year. Chair Burt thought what he was hearing was that the consultant was going to result in a one- time rethinking of things. Human Services Manager Van Def Zwaag stated the HRC is already thinking if it needs to have a half or full-day retreat just to hear the results of the consultant and to ponder them. There is also in the consulting contract a presentation to a Council committee. The timing will be tricky because they want to give people a generous amount of time to respond. Chair Burt thought that was important because like other boards and commissions, they are advisory to the Council and they want to make sure there is an understanding that they want to have an ability to have a feedback loop. Human Services Manager Van Def Zwaag said that the evaluation criteria is mostly staff-driven and taken off from the same type of ways in which their purchasing operation instructs them to look at any RFP with some of the language tweaked to think about nonprofit. Chair Burt stated they are value-based decisions. When looking at the different Human Service nonprofit providers doing important work filling gaps that exist in the community, there is a lot of value-based decision making. SUMMARY MINUTES Page 6 of 12 Finance Committee Meeting Summary Minutes: 3/19/2024 Human Services Manager Van Def Zwaag commented that the members of the HRC have an appreciation for some of this kind of evaluation criteria because they have an appreciation for every organization. Having the ability to appreciate them but go back to an evaluation criteria would be helpful. Chair Burt noted that there is not always a good correlation between the value of a service provided and the small nonprofits and their organizational structure and ability to provide that information. Human Services Manager Van Def Zwaag countered that is why they simplified the HSRAP application because they heard the reason small nonprofits were not applying was because the process itself was a barrier. Chair Burt said they approve providers in a context of being entities providing extremely valuable services to the community at a fraction of the cost of it the City provided them. They are able to leverage the dollars with their donor base. That poses the question of what they want to recommend in terms of the funding level. He thought they should consider how effective it was for them to fund these needs through these kinds of programs versus either the needs go unmet or City tries to do it through Staff. His bottom line was that this is money well spent. Council Member Veenker agreed with re-evaluating the criteria and that City funding helped leverage other funds. Human Services Manager Van Def Zwaag heard from a lot of nonprofits that being able to go to other funders and say they have funding from the City adds legitimacy to the work they do. Chair Burt detailed how Magical Bridge Playground was a good example of how impactful city dollars can be if an organization leverages them. Vice Chair Lauing opined there is unlimited money they could spend because of the demand from all the nonprofits but they have to cut it off somewhere. He surmised they need to know the amount approved in January. In terms of making the decision on 1 percent or 0.3, they did not have to make that decision until they were in the budgeting process. He thought that made sense as a policy in order to see where they are in the budget before raising or lowering HSRAP funds. He wondered if they could postpone the decision on automatically going to 1 percent and leave it as they will make an evaluation when they look at the budget year as long as they make a decision by July. Council Member Veenker brought up the example of the flexible guidance thing and asked if it was a good time to talk about the retiree benefit funding policy. Assistant City Clerk Nose stated a policy did not have to be established. In terms of alternatives, any finance person would say earmarking percentages of the general fund to a specific use is a limiting policy. Where there have been areas that they have significant priority like the retiree SUMMARY MINUTES Page 7 of 12 Finance Committee Meeting Summary Minutes: 3/19/2024 funding policy, they have made goals of where they would like to be at certain points in time. They have identified a hierarchy of how those contributions are made but they also provide wiggle room as part of the annual budget process feedback should this policy impact the delivery of services. She discussed how that process was exercised during COVID. Chair Burt was not worried about what percentage they might go up as they have budget formulas in place. He referenced Attachment A and was glad they went back to 2001. When they included Avenidas and PACCC, they were at over 1 percent until 2006. Now, including them they are at 0.72%. He was not sure that was apples to apples because they have other one-offs they have done. Assistant City Clerk Nose stated that gets back to the question of what would be characterized as part of it. City Manager Ed Shikada offered to rerun the calculations to try to redefine what is to be included. Chair Burt realized this conversation started two years ago and his colleagues did not have some of that context. There was discussion around looking at how much of their budget should be allocated to these valuable service providers. The sentiment from Council was whether they should be spending a bit more. Vice Mayor Lauing asked a little bit more of what. He talked about what has already been spent. Chair Burt [inaudible]. There will be some judgement-based decision but there is value including re-examining the policy. Council Member Veenker thought the basis of the referral was evaluating if it should be a little more and how much. She referenced where it talks about increasing HSRAP funding to 1 percent would be an additional 2 million. To increase Human Services funding, it would be 0.8 million. She wondered if they could do a million as it was in between. She would be interested in a conversation to say they could do a little more. She referenced the bridging paragraph on packet pages seven and eight and the amounts discussed. City Manager Shikada stated they should unpack the assumption in that description of Human Services because it is not all inclusive. Council Member Veenker said she would be happy to do that but her point was when looking at those numbers and the historic chart, she felt like she would like to do more if possible. She thought they should start exploring that with what the definition is. Assistant City Clerk Nose discussed what is included in the human services funding being the HSRAP grant process plus the Avenidas and PACCC contracts. SUMMARY MINUTES Page 8 of 12 Finance Committee Meeting Summary Minutes: 3/19/2024 Human Services Manager Van Def Zwaag added if looking at the contracts she manages in the office of Human Services, HSRAP is it and because PACCC and Avenidas were moved out of HSRAP, Council voiced when they get CPI increases in the future, they wanted them to be included. HSRAP, PACCC, Avenidas and Project Sentinel are the ongoing contracts she manages. City Manager Shikada stated that does not include Ada's, LifeMoves, or any of the others. Human Services Manager Van Def Zwaag said Ada’s is included within HSRAP but the level of funding was not a level Council supported. Chair Burt stated there are still other human service fundings they are doing that are not captured in HSRAP, Avenidas or PACCC in the table. Council Member Veenker thought that was clear because the language above the table says that. She felt something in the neighborhood of roughly a million in the near term would be an interesting thing to recommend. Chair Burt did not think they have the information to look at what they believe are squarely in human services as opposed to the fuzzy ones. At a minimum, they want to look at those but they also have a question of HSRAP funding. Under this chart, they did a modest boost in FY23 and a more significant boost in FY24. It shows a modest decline in 25 and a significant decline in 26. Council expressed an intention that what they added was not made binding for future budgets but the increase they did in HSRAP funding in 24 was an indication of where they wanted to be at a minimum going forward. He thought the more immediate issue was giving guidance on HSRAP funding alone in the coming fiscal year and beyond. He wanted to take the 24 and have a CPI above that. Assistant City Clerk Nose said that current policy has that sunsetting after two years. It was a one-time influx of funding to HSRAP. Chair Burt countered he would characterize it that they made a decision to continue it that far. They did not make a decision on not continuing it beyond that. Assistant City Clerk Nose stated from a budget perspective, it was put in as a two-year proposal and it is the Council’s discretion every time. Chair Burt did not agree with the implication that Council decided it was only for two years. It was that they decided to do it for two years and left it undecided beyond that. He discussed when they described one-third of business tax toward affordable housing, they said it was not yet defined how much that would be to new capital projects and operations. They briefly discussed in the last year or so whether the ongoing LifeMoves is something they would allocate a portion of the housing for or not. They did not come to a decision point. SUMMARY MINUTES Page 9 of 12 Finance Committee Meeting Summary Minutes: 3/19/2024 City Manager Shikada recalled when confronted with the need to commit to LifeMoves that they saw the business tax as providing resources that could be used for that purpose making them comfortable making that commitment. Council Member Veenker thought it was an interesting point looking at FY27 and it is almost 2 million and 1 percent is 3 million, that LifeMoves gets them there. From a policy perspective, if they are trying to say they value that type of thing at the 1 percent level, saving room for that is a good way to get them to that 1 percent. City Manager Shikada thought there may be something of a reframing the question if the question is how much the City is funding Human Services. They could come back with including the ones that appear to be somewhat aligned with the HSRAP program but not within. Then they can use that figure as a baseline for the further discussion of that being the right number, more or less. Vice Mayor Lauing thought Chair Burt was suggesting for the time-being given they do not know whether to make any other decision that they should do the CPI on the 24 number in terms of guidance for the current HSRAP program. He was good with that for this meeting. Council Member Veenker supposed that was tiny compared to what they are being asked about. Chair Burt stated as of right now, they have the budgeting process assuming decline. Unless they give guidance otherwise, that will go into this year’s budget. He was trying to segment if they cannot make the bigger decision now because they want better context of total human services, they could at least put some guardrails in place on what their intention is on HSRAP alone. Assistant City Clerk Nose wanted to be sure the committee understands that reduction does not happen until 2026. Human Services Manager Van Def Zwaag explained the reduction. Vice Mayor Lauing said that would be easy for them to fix in the budget. Chair Burt stated they could take what they said was the funding level and add the CPI. They may want to go beyond that but wanted to make sure they give at least that guidance and not roll back. Vice Mayor Lauing surmised they did not have to take a motion on that on that day. Chair Burt clarified that as they work on their proposal, if they do not give that guidance they will struggle with all these things after the budget proposal comes forward. It is better to give as much input as possible beforehand. From a process standpoint, he wondered what committee could do to assure they have a CPI add on top of that increase they did the last year. SUMMARY MINUTES Page 10 of 12 Finance Committee Meeting Summary Minutes: 3/19/2024 City Manager Shikada said as a practical matter, Staff can take that advice and run with it but if it is helpful to have clarity on the record then a motion would be fine. Assistant City Clerk Nose stated the only thing for her in terms of Staff taking direction versus a motion on the record would technically be the committee making a recommendation to Council which means she has to take that as a consent item. Chair Burt commented if she was good with the input then they were good. He wanted to talk about timeframe and what they want to do looking at the bigger Human Services funding question. City Manager Shikada thought it would be helpful for them to itemize the dollars to the organizations for the current year and going forward so they could decide what is in and what is out in a broad definition of Human Services. Chair Burt asked if that would include Cubberley rents. City Manager Shikada explained that is part of the pending follow-up to the nonprofit audit so it would not immediately because there is a body of work that needs to happen there. He was suggesting itemizing the organizations listed in the paragraph on page seven that are outside of HISRAP but include some human service related services. Chair Burt said he would recommend dropping a couple that are more tangentially related to Human Services but are primarily something else like PATMA, Environmental Volunteers and maybe UNAFF. City Manager Shikada thought the primary issue from a staff perspective was if there is any criteria associated with that decision and pointed out UNAFF currently has a request on the table. Chair Burt answered this goes to even something like Third Thursday as they have said they want to invest more in special events. City Manager Shikada suggested maybe a separate funding category or maybe even a grant program around special events. Chair Burt said they have been trying to shoehorn them into calling Third Thursday economic development but it is more of a special event than economic development as is UNAFF. He suggested City Manager Shikada give that some thought. He thought it would be better than for them to try and shoehorn something in where it does not quite fit. Assistant City Clerk Nose pointed out there are two other requests on the table from Magical Bridge for $150,000 annually to support adaptive programming and Ability Path asked Council for $250,000 to support their work. There is not a process for these kinds of requests to come through which is a point of tension. SUMMARY MINUTES Page 11 of 12 Finance Committee Meeting Summary Minutes: 3/19/2024 Vice Mayor Lauing added for these one-offs there should be a separate fund or a percentage of HISRAP kept in reserve so they have a chance to address it. Human Services Manager Van Def Zwaag commented the hard part is some of the dollar amounts they are asking for are probably funding for HISRAP agencies. Chair Burt stated all those various agencies ask for more than they get. Vice Mayor Lauing said there may be a limit above which it never goes to HISRAP and they have to be picked up from a Council fund. He added it would not stop at those two so there has to be a limit on what they will do. Assistant City Clerk Nose agreed stating ultimately they would want to consider how they would choose to fund those. Council Member Veenker asked why those could not go through HISRAP. Human Services Manager Van Def Zwaag answered that HISRAP is only every two years. She would also argue their biggest HISRAP grant is now $90,000 but that level of volume is not currently happening partly because HISRAP has the funding to be able to set aside that much for one organization. Chair Burt commented another thing they are not quite clear on is how those program will align with the criteria. The other component is they might align but there is not enough dollars. That goes into a more comprehensive look at it. Vice Mayor Lauing suggested having a homework assignment where the three of them think about possible criteria changes they might want to decide they want to do or hand over to HRC and at the next meeting they can compare the lists. Chair Burt clarified in advance of the next time they meet on this, they want to get the criteria far enough in advance that they can really think about it. Assistant City Clerk Nose thought the other piece that ties into this was the Human Services needs assessment that is happening in advance of the 2026-2027 grant process. She thought that was shaping into a nice forum for them to look at their needs. Chair Burt thought it was a good reminder that they have the needs assessment coming up. He asked if they could get the existing criteria and the scope of work so they understand the current foundation, what the consultants will be looking at and let them think about it more. Council Member Veenker heard that it is off-cycle, it is a one-off and it would not compete well. She explanation on those things. City Manager Shikada said also the proposals there were not fully described. In the case of Ability Path, it was his understanding that it was a one-time expenditure in order to enable the SUMMARY MINUTES Page 12 of 12 Finance Committee Meeting Summary Minutes: 3/19/2024 planned programming in the new facility. Within HISRAP, that would not compete well because it is not a service and it is bigger than many of the other allocations. In the case of Magical Bridge, that is ongoing programming which may not be funded at that level because it is so much larger than the grants that are typically provided although the activity itself might fit within the description of HISRAP. On UNAFF, it is orthogonal to the basic program of HISRAP and might not compete well for that reason. Chair Burt summarized they would be getting the existing criteria and the scope of services for the Human Services needs assessment. Staff will also be noodling on special events or some other category for things that do not fit in HISRAP but have been pushed into that bucket. Assistant City Clerk Nose added bringing the actual grants to the committee like they used to. She stated given the guidance that the committee has articulated a desire for in terms of the budget process meaning funding levels for FY25-26, she was not sure it was critical to bring the rest of the items back in the spring timeframe but perhaps could be revisited when they return. She discussed upcoming meeting agendas on April 2 and April 16. Chair Burt discussed PATMA and wanted to be prepared to have a deeper discussion on that in the future. No action taken. Adjournment: The meeting was adjourned at 7:20 P.M.