City Changes Funding Process For Nonprofit Agency Requests
April 16, 2019 at 2:06 a.m.
City Changes Funding Process For Nonprofit Agency Requests
By David [email protected]
By a consensus vote of 6-0 Monday, with Councilman Ron Shoemaker absent due to illness, the council voted to go forward with the policy for nonprofits.
Mayor Joe Thallemer Joe began the discussion by stating, “I asked council to put together a policy or at least guidelines for not-for-profits so that when the budget discussion comes up ... (we have) some type of guidance as to how allocate those funds.”
He mentioned that several new not-for-profits applied for funding in 2018 for 2019 and the council wanted some guidance so the new policies come from within.
“Hopefully it’ll be useful this year when we start budgeting in a couple of months,” Thallemer said.
Council President Diane Quance said she met with Kosciusko County Community Foundation CEO Suzie Light, who helped the council’s task force come up with the proposed application. The task force includes council members Jeff Grose, Cindy Dobbins and Mike Klondaris.
Dobbins said they know that United Way funding is being cut for a lot of organizations so “we fully anticipate that we could be getting even more requests this year, and we want to make sure we are doing the appropriate thing and we are taking all the due diligence in how we are spending the money.”
She said they wanted to make sure that everything the council funds is in compliance with Indiana state code and accounting. That compliance with state law is one of the first things the committee will look at when reviewing nonprofit funding applications.
All applications must include a cover sheet, which is a summary of the nonprofit’s request, project costs and purpose of the funding. Grose said it will provide more information to the council as the nonprofits make their requests, and the requests will be uniform.
Dobbins said once the applications are received, the committee will review the applications and score them based upon a point system. The committee will then talk about their scores, and if more information is needed, a representative of the nonprofit will have to meet with them.
“I think in the past perhaps we’ve been a little too subjective, and I think this is going to narrow it down for us,” Dobbins said.
Quance said the next step would be for the task force to bring a recommendation to the full council, which will make the final decision as a whole.
Dobbins then explained a new step in the process. Any nonprofits that receive funding from the council will have to provide a follow-up at the end of the year explaining how the money was used and who was impacted.
The council decided the funding applications would be due by June 15. Total amount given to nonprofits may not exceed 1.5% of the present-year general fund. The applications will be available beginning the first week of May.
“We’re going to try it this year. We’ll see how this works out,” Thallemer said, adding that it was “very smart” to get Light involved as she gave a lot of “good input.”
City attorney Scott Reust said, “I think it’s great that you point out right on the application those things that you can legally provide money for.”
Councilman Jack Wilhite said, “I think this exceeded my expectations. I think it’s really good. I want to thank the committee for the hard work they put into it, and a special shout-out to Suzie Light. Her experience and expertise, it shows.”
At the end of Monday’s meeting, Thallemer spoke about housing.
“I think in our community we’re impacted because of the quality of the workforce that we have and there’s a demand for houses that we’re not able to meet,” he said.
Thallemer said he, City Planner Jeremy Skinner and others have been meeting to look at how best a municipality can incentivize the building and/or acquisition of single-family homes in a certain range, which could be multi-family as well.
“There are many communities that have different types of incentives all across the nation. There’s land trusts, there’s housing funds that are set up, there’s incentives on planning, there’s incentives on density. There’s a lot of different ways we could go,” he said.
Thallemer said they’re working hard with what’s available in Indiana to come up with a plan to help locally kickstart housing in the “workforce range.”
“The one thing we need to do is define exactly what price, housing and what size we want to incentivize. To that end, we’re working with the Foundation and the county on a housing study that we hope to answer that question,” he said.
He said there’s a lot of problems, but also thinks there’s many solutions. He said the council might have to make some bold moves to help with the local housing problem.
Thallemer mentioned that U.S. Sen. Todd Young was in town Friday and he agreed the problem needs a local solution.
Skinner added, “We need to look to look at housing as it pertains to all levels. When we say affordable employee-related housing, we think of everybody. So it’s not just necessarily single-family homes. I think we also need to remember that younger people may not be looking for homes, they may need apartments, they need to be affordable and they need to be targeted toward that work force.”
In other business, the council:
• Continued the tax abatement for Little Crow Lofts LLC, 201 S. Detroit St., for a third year.
Skinner said the original approval for the tax abatement was based on $6.4 million to rehabilitate the former Little Crow manufacturing facility into an affordable housing apartment building, which is complete.
• Reviewed but took no action on a resolution approving a comprehensive financial management policy. Minor changes were requested and it will be brought back to the council at its next meeting. The policy provides the city’s leadership with guidance for maintaining appropriate fiscal planning and reporting. The council has looked at such a resolution since March. It is to be reviewed June 30 annually.
• Heard a brief presentation from Skinner on the Redevelopment Commission report. No action was taken but the report is required by state law.
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By a consensus vote of 6-0 Monday, with Councilman Ron Shoemaker absent due to illness, the council voted to go forward with the policy for nonprofits.
Mayor Joe Thallemer Joe began the discussion by stating, “I asked council to put together a policy or at least guidelines for not-for-profits so that when the budget discussion comes up ... (we have) some type of guidance as to how allocate those funds.”
He mentioned that several new not-for-profits applied for funding in 2018 for 2019 and the council wanted some guidance so the new policies come from within.
“Hopefully it’ll be useful this year when we start budgeting in a couple of months,” Thallemer said.
Council President Diane Quance said she met with Kosciusko County Community Foundation CEO Suzie Light, who helped the council’s task force come up with the proposed application. The task force includes council members Jeff Grose, Cindy Dobbins and Mike Klondaris.
Dobbins said they know that United Way funding is being cut for a lot of organizations so “we fully anticipate that we could be getting even more requests this year, and we want to make sure we are doing the appropriate thing and we are taking all the due diligence in how we are spending the money.”
She said they wanted to make sure that everything the council funds is in compliance with Indiana state code and accounting. That compliance with state law is one of the first things the committee will look at when reviewing nonprofit funding applications.
All applications must include a cover sheet, which is a summary of the nonprofit’s request, project costs and purpose of the funding. Grose said it will provide more information to the council as the nonprofits make their requests, and the requests will be uniform.
Dobbins said once the applications are received, the committee will review the applications and score them based upon a point system. The committee will then talk about their scores, and if more information is needed, a representative of the nonprofit will have to meet with them.
“I think in the past perhaps we’ve been a little too subjective, and I think this is going to narrow it down for us,” Dobbins said.
Quance said the next step would be for the task force to bring a recommendation to the full council, which will make the final decision as a whole.
Dobbins then explained a new step in the process. Any nonprofits that receive funding from the council will have to provide a follow-up at the end of the year explaining how the money was used and who was impacted.
The council decided the funding applications would be due by June 15. Total amount given to nonprofits may not exceed 1.5% of the present-year general fund. The applications will be available beginning the first week of May.
“We’re going to try it this year. We’ll see how this works out,” Thallemer said, adding that it was “very smart” to get Light involved as she gave a lot of “good input.”
City attorney Scott Reust said, “I think it’s great that you point out right on the application those things that you can legally provide money for.”
Councilman Jack Wilhite said, “I think this exceeded my expectations. I think it’s really good. I want to thank the committee for the hard work they put into it, and a special shout-out to Suzie Light. Her experience and expertise, it shows.”
At the end of Monday’s meeting, Thallemer spoke about housing.
“I think in our community we’re impacted because of the quality of the workforce that we have and there’s a demand for houses that we’re not able to meet,” he said.
Thallemer said he, City Planner Jeremy Skinner and others have been meeting to look at how best a municipality can incentivize the building and/or acquisition of single-family homes in a certain range, which could be multi-family as well.
“There are many communities that have different types of incentives all across the nation. There’s land trusts, there’s housing funds that are set up, there’s incentives on planning, there’s incentives on density. There’s a lot of different ways we could go,” he said.
Thallemer said they’re working hard with what’s available in Indiana to come up with a plan to help locally kickstart housing in the “workforce range.”
“The one thing we need to do is define exactly what price, housing and what size we want to incentivize. To that end, we’re working with the Foundation and the county on a housing study that we hope to answer that question,” he said.
He said there’s a lot of problems, but also thinks there’s many solutions. He said the council might have to make some bold moves to help with the local housing problem.
Thallemer mentioned that U.S. Sen. Todd Young was in town Friday and he agreed the problem needs a local solution.
Skinner added, “We need to look to look at housing as it pertains to all levels. When we say affordable employee-related housing, we think of everybody. So it’s not just necessarily single-family homes. I think we also need to remember that younger people may not be looking for homes, they may need apartments, they need to be affordable and they need to be targeted toward that work force.”
In other business, the council:
• Continued the tax abatement for Little Crow Lofts LLC, 201 S. Detroit St., for a third year.
Skinner said the original approval for the tax abatement was based on $6.4 million to rehabilitate the former Little Crow manufacturing facility into an affordable housing apartment building, which is complete.
• Reviewed but took no action on a resolution approving a comprehensive financial management policy. Minor changes were requested and it will be brought back to the council at its next meeting. The policy provides the city’s leadership with guidance for maintaining appropriate fiscal planning and reporting. The council has looked at such a resolution since March. It is to be reviewed June 30 annually.
• Heard a brief presentation from Skinner on the Redevelopment Commission report. No action was taken but the report is required by state law.
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