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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2025-03-11 Policy & Services Committee Summary MinutesPOLICY & SERVICES COMMITTEE SUMMARY MINUTES Page 1 of 5 Special Meeting March 11, 2025 The Policy & Services Committee of the City of Palo Alto met on this date in Council Chambers and by virtual teleconference at 6:02 P.M. Present In-Person: Veenker (Chair), Lu, Stone Absent: None. Call to Order Vice Mayor Vicki Veenker called the meeting to order. Deputy City Clerk Christine Prior noted all committee members were present. Public Comments No requests to speak. Agenda Items 1. Nonprofit Partnership Workplan: Phased Approach (continued from February 11, 2025) Deputy City Manager Chantal Cotton Gaines announced Assistant to the City Manager Lupita Alamos would be leading the staff presentation. Lupita Alamos, Assistant to the City Manager, provided a slide presentation about the Nonprofit Partnership Workplan including the Policy and Services recommendation, the purpose, first and second phase goals, phase 1 summary, grant implementation timeframe options, rubric and application feedback and staff recommendation. Councilmember Greer Stone requested explanation of the recommendation to allocate $185,000 in FY26. He was curious how Council would deal with overlapping organizations. SUMMARY MINUTES Page 2 of 5 (Sp.) Policy & Services Committee Meeting Summary Minutes: 3/11/2025 Ms. Alamos stated it would be $185,000 in total for all requests and confirmed it would be recommended in the city manager’s budget. She indicated they had discussed whether they wanted to have any criteria around nonprofits that already received funding. The feedback she heard was they wanted to balance both access of new organizations to this money while also thinking about those that already receive funding and that may want to leverage that for further funding. She thought they would learn from this being a pilot. Ed Shikada, City Manager, noted that this reflected the prior year's allocation and the continuing funding. It would be within the discretion of Council to allocate more or less. As this was coming forward prior to the actual budget deliberations, they wanted to use that initial placeholder. Vice Mayor Veenker asked for a reconciliation of $246,000 in 2025, a recommendation of $185,000 in FY26 and then ongoing $235,000. She asked why the amount went down. She assumed if the program expanded and required additional funds as indicated in the fiscal impact paragraph that they would likely have a larger budget to administer. She appreciated the scaling of the reporting requirements. She noticed the packet talked about grants greater than $5000 and thought it was intended to be a less than sign and advised correcting that. Ms. Alamos explained the $185,000 was made up of the one-time requests the prior year. The $55,000 would be used for community events. She confirmed the fiscal situation was a factor in the amount going down. She added this was a pilot and if the Committee wanted to recommend something different they could put it into consideration. She confirmed Vice Mayor Veenker’s assumption and stated it would scale with the grant amount and the administrative processing required. Item 1 Public Comment 1. Larry M., Government Affairs Community Liaison for JobTrain, described the services his organization provided for Palo Alto. They wanted to know if they had to be a brick and mortar organization in Palo Alto to receive funding for this grant application program through the community services. He informed the Committee they were building a 110,000 square-foot facility in six months in East Palo Alto. Councilmember George Lu wanted to address the public commenter’s question about eligibility restrictions. He thought the rubric made sense and the weights were generally appropriate. He presumed they would make a more detailed rubric when actually evaluating the applications and that equity impact was an important one to be clear on. Regarding the event form, he thought it was worth checking if the event was expected to be free for the community or having the estimated price available. Ms. Alamos confirmed the only restriction was that it be a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. City Manager Shikada added one of the evaluation criteria would be service to Palo Alto residents. SUMMARY MINUTES Page 3 of 5 (Sp.) Policy & Services Committee Meeting Summary Minutes: 3/11/2025 Councilmember Stone supported the proposal. He supported option one based on the feedback from the nonprofits. He agreed weighting made sense. He stated they should watch the pilot unfold over the year and re-examine the following year to determine if the weighting would need to be changed in any way. Vice Mayor Veenker advised caution on item four on the rubric as it might not be as hard and fast a metric as some of the others. She thought the program and community impact section gave a sense of how impactful the program would be within the City. She liked the question about the outreach of the organization in the equity impact section. She was interested in also asking about outreach not just in the context of equity impact. In the program and community impact, she would be interested to know how they reach out to Palo Altans. She asked about compilation reports. Ms. Alamos explained a compilation report was reviewed by a certified accountant. It would not be as engaged and involved as an audited financial. There would be less of a cost associated with that level of reporting. She stated she was interested in hearing feedback on the use of funds. Vice Mayor Veenker indicated she was good with the shorter timeline regarding the option one and two timing. Councilmember Stone stated he supported option one. He did not have a problem being less restrictive over how the funds were used. Councilmember Lu opined if they were funding day-to-day operations through a one-time grant, the nonprofit may not be very stable or able to potentially fulfill its mission otherwise. He preferred some ratio keeping it more oriented towards programming. Vice Mayor Veenker did not want to prohibit that, at least as a portion of it. She thought grants applications that had higher percentages of overhead or infrastructure may perhaps be less competitive. If they need some of that to get it done, she did not think they had enough data to be restrictive about it. She thought they could revisit that in a year or two or if the program grew larger. She thought the applicants could use their own judgement about how to make their grant application attraction and they could use their judgement about whether or not it is on a case-by-case basis. Councilmember Stone agreed they wanted to see programming but did not want to be overly restrictive. He wanted to incorporate into the motion if it was unanimous it would go on consent. MOTION: Councilmember Stone moved, seconded by Vice Mayor Veenker, to recommend the City Council approve Phase 1 of the Nonprofit Workplan with the Committee’s recommendations – establishing a process for nonprofit requests for funding through the FY 2026 City Budget process. This does not pertain to currently-established grant programs. SUMMARY MINUTES Page 4 of 5 (Sp.) Policy & Services Committee Meeting Summary Minutes: 3/11/2025 MOTION PASSED: 3-0 2. Presentation of the Office of the City Auditor Quarterly Report for the Period of October – December 2024 Kate Murdock, City Auditor, provided a slide presentation of the quarterly status report for FY2025, Q2 including an agenda, quarterly report for October – December 2025 audit activities, status of FY2024 audit plan projects, status of FY2025 audit plan projects started in January 2025, quarterly report for July – September 2024 hotline reports and updates, benchmarking analysis, comparative information for FY 2024 and 2025, some metrics from ALGA’s 2024 Benchmarking Survey and audit plans compared to ranked audit risk categories from ALGA’s 2024 Benchmarking Survey. Councilmember Stone thought the City’s code enforcement and effectiveness of Palo Alto 311 would be a valuable area to review looking forward under task 5. It had been beefed up and he wanted to see if they were becoming more effective or timely in response. Vice Mayor Veenker asked about the selection of external financial auditor under task 3. She asked for comments about the comparators on the benchmarking analysis. Ms. Murdock explained they help provide oversight of that audit service. In the past, they helped negotiate the MGO contract. They then review their reports and sit in on any status updates they have to discuss issues. The city auditor would not typically provide the financial statement audit. She commented they were not able to identify anybody who had the same type of city audit or function that was close to Palo Alto. That could be reviewed in the future. She stated the relevance of the comparator was dependent on scoping. Councilmember Lu wanted to see an alternative set of cities for the benchmarking analysis for future quarters. He thought FTE requirements could be a column and they could exclude some of the cities that have elected auditors. He wanted to see a couple of other cities where the audit function was outsourced, as well. He asked for context on how people were assigned on different projects and where the 14+ FTE number came from. Ms. Murdock acknowledged the 14+ FTE number was misleading. They have audit staff who work on audit projects for other cities. They do not have anyone specifically dedicated only to Palo Alto. For the FY25 audit plan, they had two individuals who were dedicated and on every single project. They were also on projects in the FY24 audit plan. They were trying to build that knowledge base and familiarity with the city and its processes from that perspective. In terms of other assignments, they try and fit a person into an audit they had done before. They have people who are industry experts in cybersecurity who work in the private sector or maybe sometimes in the public sector who are able to bring all that knowledge to the table and give and give them a sense of the risks they need to be aware of. In terms of the IT controls and cybersecurity audits, they had those IT-specific audit staff working on those audits. They try and SUMMARY MINUTES Page 5 of 5 (Sp.) Policy & Services Committee Meeting Summary Minutes: 3/11/2025 staff each audit with people who have experience while balancing that with people wanting to grow their skills and learn about new topics. MOTION: Councilmember Lu moved, seconded by Councilmember Stone, to recommend the City Council accept the Office of the City Auditor’s Quarterly Status Report covering October – December 2024. MOTION PASSED: 3-0 Future Meetings and Agendas Vice Mayor Veenker mentioned their next meeting would be on April 8 at 6 PM. They would have one or two audits on that agenda. Deputy City Manager Cotton Gaines wanted to remind the Committee there would be another half of the priority objectives once the Council reviewed them. They also had a draft work plan they shared for both Finance Committee and Policy and Services. There would be an opportunity for the full Council to see what was on the docket this year. The dates the items would come to the Committee may change depending on availability of staff. Deputy City Clerk Prior asked if the Committee would like to choose 6 PM as their normal start time. Vice Mayor Veenker confirmed the Committee would like to choose 6 PM as their normal start time. Adjournment: The meeting was adjourned at 7:01 PM