A.G. Gancarski
On Wednesday afternoon, a special committee on Public Service Grants was convened by the Jacksonville City Council. Chaired by Anna Brosche, the committee included Councilmembers John Crescimbeni, Sam Newby, Katrina Brown, and Reggie Gaffney.
At issue was a scoring process that charitably could be called “subjective.” Groups had scores that were all over the place. Jacksonville Area Legal Aid had a high score from one reviewer of 100, and another of 48. Lutheran Social Services had a range from 65 to 92; the United Way, 68 to 100.
To be sure, there are caveats. There always are.
The high and the low scores are thrown out, leaving the two middle scores of the four total for most applications to determine the eligibility for funding. And, according to those familiar with the process, there have been improvements in recent years.
But the complaints are real … and they’re not spectacular. Complaints such as a lack of continuity, a process rife with subjective judgement and failure to notice the elements of applications in some cases. As well, one of the scorers had a tendency, demonstrated across the board, of low-balling scores.
A tough grader may be a learning experience in a classroom. But when it comes to jousting for Public Service Grants, from a pool of $2 million, down from $11 million a decade ago, a tough, arbitrary grade can mean the difference between getting the $100,000 an organization might need, or reducing services and/or staffing levels.
Consistent with his remarks in recent days, Crescimbeni led the charge against the “flawed system,” citing the fact that in some cases, “all the scores seem to be the same,” and throughout the evaluations, there is a lack of continuity.
The charge for the committee boiled down to reviewing and assessing the recommendations of the PSG Committee by Aug. 28, for the current budget.
Crescimbeni questioned the arbitrary timeline, given that the budget itself isn’t approved until late September, and there is no budget to allocate from until it is finally approved by Council.
“It’s more important to get it right,” he said, than to get it done in the next nine days.
The councilman got pushback though from other committee members.
Reggie Gaffney, who has run a nonprofit for a couple of decades and has applied for 50 grants in that time, advised that council take the recommendations of the committee, respect what they did, and move on.
While he believed the process needed a review, he also asserted that no matter what the process is, “somebody’s going to lose.
Crescimbeni has maintained for some time that public service grants were “underfunded,” a contention shared by Rashanda Jackson, the chairwoman of the Public Service Grants Council.
She urged increased funding for those endeavors, as well as modifying the ordinance to address flaws in the process.
“The individuals we’re holding this conversation about are dealing with this [problem] on a daily basis,” Jackson said.
Rena Coughlin, who was central to Mayor Lenny Curry‘s transition process and is a leader in the Jacksonville nonprofit committee, was asked if she had confidence in the process.
Her answer? “I’m going to punt.”
She did add that scorers needed “more guidance” and “more training.”
That said, “because the process has gone so far,” Coughlin advised that the council “respect the scores that are there.”
However, some nonprofits didn’t believe the process respected them.
The Salvation Army got dinged, for example, because a scorer believed that “church services could not be provided without discrimination.”
They lost out on $125,000. They didn’t bring it up sooner, they said, because they were “told not to buck the system.”
A representative from Learn to Read, which requested $30,000 for addressing learning disabilities, asserted that the “system is not working.”
A representative from the North Florida School of Special Education, meanwhile, told of going to PSG meetings where there wasn’t even a quorum of council members.
In the end, Gaffney’s motion to move the current funding through the committee passed, but not without comment from Crescimbeni, who asserted that he is “not going to sign on to putting the City Council seal of approval in the process.”
After the meeting, he asserted that this measure would be reconsidered in the Finance Committee.
That may be a more favorable terrain for such a matter. The special committee by and large consisted of rookie council members.
Finance, by and large, is not.
Crescimbeni mentioned that resources, in general, have been constrained by other obligations the city has assumed. The Police and Fire Pension Fund, for example, gets $150 million every year from the city, which is up from $49 million six years prior.
