A.G. Gancarski
During the budget deliberations of the late summer, concerns were raised about Jacksonville’s Public Service Grants process.
Complaints ranged from arbitrary scoring and a less-than-committed group of scorers to a process that had been overtly politicized in the past.
To that end, Council President Greg Anderson authorized a committee to look into refining the process going forward, with the goal of building transparency, fairness, and trust.
Its first meeting was on August 19; its next meeting was on Wednesday morning.
Among the changes being considered: required annual training for Public Service Grant council members; establishing a formal appeals process; delaying allocations until the budget is passed by City Council; considering an RFP for funding allocation; and adjusting funding levels by tweaking maximum funding levels and implementing tiered funding to benefit non-profit organizations of all sizes.
Many of these changes accord with the much less controversial Cultural Council grant process.
Councilman John Crescimbeni, a critic of the process as it stands and the low funding in the pool in general, noted that he had been contacted by several organizations that were penalized for missing elements of their applications.
“These applications were prohibited from being scored because they were rejected,” Crescimbeni explained.
A representative from the Office of General Counsel countered that if applications are missing critical elements, such as a signature, they can be disqualified.
Crescimbeni countered that the ordinance code establishes policy requirements, yet the arbitrary decisions in the scoring process undermine legislative intent.
Councilman Reggie Gaffney followed up with concerns, including the initial review by PSG head John Snyder which disqualifies applications based on missing elements, and the subjective evaluations driven by whims of individual scorers.
“I’d like to see the Public Service committee come together and score together,” Gaffney said, to drive a sense of collective accountability.
Councilwoman Lori Boyer took issue with the nature of questions in the past, including an allocation of points for “knowing the name of your board members.”
She also explained how the $150,000 funding cap came about; previously, there was an incentive to ask for as much money as possible, with pro rata funding leading to a “peanut butter spread” across organizations that didn’t necessarily accord with needs or community goals.
Other discussion points included the benefits of training to at once improve the scoring process, while, as Chairwoman Brosche said, ensuring that everyone “feel the freedom” to score, in accordance with “appropriate training” in the non-profit industry.
“I’d rather put everything on the front end in the training process,” Brosche added, regarding the relevant statute and a shared understanding of the non-profit industry.
She also urged that training happen every year, to deepen the understanding of the process.
“It’s my understanding that no one had training,” Brosche continued.
Crescimbeni suggested that more scorers would create more statistical reliability, mitigating variance.
He also brought up “religious and philosophical” issues that have led to scorer bias in the past.
“So far I’m hearing three things coming through loud and clear,” said Boyer, who advocated for instituting an appeal process, ensuring that the PSG Council be filled with people “willing to volunteer in this capacity,” and that there be more stringent review of the questions being asked to limit undue impacts of subjectivity.
“I think we can provide some clarity on that,” said Boyer, advocating for “granular” instruction to scorers to limit error.
Continuing, Boyer asserted that “maybe it bears at least a conversation on our end” to disqualify overhead costs being paid by public service grants.
Boyer said this would be controversial to the audience, and they indeed murmured.
Boyer and Crescimbeni both pushed for training to be mandatory, and for scorers who were not trained, they could be subject to removal from the committee.
Then, public comment.
Kim Martin, from Jacksonville Area Legal Aid, spoke of problems in the review process.
“When you have a generous scorer and a less than generous scorer” working on the same stack of applications, Martin said there were issues.
Jacksonville Area Legal Aid had a high score from one reviewer of 100, and another of 48, during the scoring process.
Another public commenter, Michael Howland of the Jacksonville Speech and Hearing Center, urged for greater funding across the board, saying that it was “shameful” that non-profits had to fight for “crumbs” and a “pittance.”
His group was shut out of funding, he told FloridaPolitics.com, for the second year in a row.
More discussion on these matters will occur on Monday, October 12.
