A.G. Gancarski
On Wednesday morning, the Jacksonville City Council Public Service Grants committee continued its efforts to refine the PSG Committee processes.
The process, described as “broken” and “lacking credibility,” was a major sticking point in August and September budget talks.
Some divergence among committee members could be observed in the utility of Requests for Proposals, with committee member Reggie Gaffney wondering what the administration’s plan was regarding the PSG grant process.
Representing the mayor’s office, Ali Korman Shelton noted that there is divergence among the grants process throughout city departments, and that it’s a priority of the administration to “get all of these processes in an organized process,” while the PSG committee “got out in front of us a little bit.”
Committee Chair Anna Brosche described this as a “chicken and the egg” situation.
From there, the appeals process was discussed, among with other changes.
Gaffney noted during the meeting that the appeals process will address a portion of the issues complainants have had with the process recently.
The membership of the board would be boosted to 15 from 13, with eight appointees mayoral and the rest from Council.
And no application would be scored by fewer than five PSG council members, which, in theory, would remove the possibility of dizzying highs and lows, when the high number and the low number are dropped.
Boyer noted that when there were seven members on the committee a couple of years ago, all of them scored everything.
“A concern in the past… was that a particular person… was a hard grader,” skewing consistency of results when said scorer was in one pool but not another.
“That is why we got into dropping the high and the low,” Boyer added.
“We had an individual whose grading scale was low… and it really impacted the average,” Boyer continued.
Councilman John Crescimbeni concurred, saying that the goal of this process was “fairness… in capital letters.”
And Councilman Sam Newby observed that cutting off the high and low numbers helps address potential scorer “prejudice” against an applicant.
Questions, of course, remain. As Brosche put it, “is the intent to get more non-profits involved… or to address services and needs?”
An issue in play: how much technical assistance should be offered to applicants on filling out applications?
Missed signatures and other minor details have torpedoed funding requests.
As well, Chairwoman Brosche proposed that “applicant training” could be required as a way of ensuring that all parties applying knew how to provide the “applications with what they need.”
Crescimbeni noted that in the bidding process, the city has “mandatory pre-bid conferences” and a similar process should be instituted for training of applicants.
“If you don’t come to the training, you don’t get to submit a grant application, period,” Crescimbeni said, who observed that the “broken” process has been “broken for a long time” and that a “100 percent” remedy is essential.
Newby concurred.
“If you don’t care enough to come to the training, you don’t deserve the money,” the At Large Republican said.
Crescimbeni pointed out, regarding the disbursement of money, that “we need to get out of the business of awarding grants” on Council, allowing the final decision making of issuing grants from the PSG to be determined after budget allocations.
“This is the most attention that this has ever gotten,” Crescimbeni said, and to this end, “let’s honor [committee] decisions” and model the process of the Cultural Council, which is remarkably uncontroversial by comparison.
The committee will continue its work going forward.
