Alachua County Commission approves $350,000 to fund GRACE Street Outreach Team for one year

BY JENNIFER CABRERA

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – At their September 5 Special Meeting, the Alachua County Commission approved $350,000 to fund the GRACE Street Outreach Team for one year and asked their staff to work with GRACE and the City to plan for a county-wide street outreach program.

The Special Meeting was scheduled after the County Commission voted last Monday to allocate $150,000 to fill a City of Gainesville funding shortfall for GRACE Marketplace and also voted to consider allocating $350,000 to continue the street outreach work, which would otherwise end on November 1.

While introducing the agenda item, Assistant County Manager Tommy Crosby said his staff assumed that the $150,000 would come from “the excess funds we had from the vaccination program, that were left over from ARPA funds,” which were previously rolled into the General Fund. He added, “So it’s a one-time use.”

Crosby then asked whether the board wanted to provide the $350,000 that had been requested for the Street Outreach Team. 

Commissioner Chuck Chestnut immediately said he was not in favor of providing the funds because the City and County are in the final year of a five-year contract in which both entities committed to spending $1.5 million this year on homeless services, with the City providing the emergency shelter (GRACE) and the County providing supportive permanent housing. Chestnut said, “You know, I feel sympathetic for [the City] in terms of the situation they’re in, but that’s not our fault, that they’re in that situation.” 

Chestnut said that if they decide to fund the team, he would prefer that the team be brought under the County: “If we’re going to spend $350,000… I’d rather see that $350,000 go to supportive permanent housing and also rapid rehousing… but the outreach seems to be a good program, and bringing it under the County seems like the right thing to do.” He said commissioners received many emails over the weekend, urging them to keep the team under GRACE’s umbrella.

“Blindsided”

Commissioner Mary Alford agreed that permanent housing “is the long-term answer, but this is the step that we have to take–you know, the first hands we have on some people are with the Street Outreach Team.” She said GRACE and Jon DeCarmine were “blindsided” at the August 28 meeting by the suggestion that the team be brought under the County. 

Alford thought that County employees might not be as effective in reaching the homeless as the members of the outreach team: “I support it staying in GRACE.”

Chestnut: “If it comes to a vote, I’m not supporting it”

Chestnut said he didn’t see the difference between leaving it at GRACE and bringing it under the County: “They’re still doing the same work.” He observed, “I think that it’s not a priority of the City of Gainesville to fund it, and they want us to fund it, and I just have some real concerns with that… because we’re gonna have to give up something if we give them $350,000… If it comes to a vote, I’m not supporting it.”

Chair Anna Prizzia said she believes “the Street Outreach Team is a really critical piece of permanent supportive housing,” but she thought the County should “explore a lot more” before making the decision to bring it in-house. She favored looking at what has been done in other parts of the country and what the total cost would be for county-wide street outreach, as opposed to the current program, which focuses on the city. She suggested, “We ask them to continue the work, we spend the $350,000 this year with GRACE and give the direction to our staff that over the next year, we negotiate a plan for a county-wide street outreach program and that they bring that forward to us during our budget negotiations next year.”

Prizzia said to Chestnut, “I’m with you. I’m sad that the City didn’t prioritize this and didn’t put it into their budget. But I understand they had a lot of really difficult decisions to make. And at this stage, I feel like, regardless, they have made the stance that they’re not going to fund it. And I do believe this is a really critical, critical resource that’s working and doing positive work in our community. And I don’t want to see it stalled or ended while we try to figure out the budget situation. So I’d like to do both.”

Commissioner Marihelen Wheeler said she had no problem with a one-time $350,000, but “I have not heard the City say that they would pick it up after this one-time shortfall.” She said putting the program under the County would give the team security and benefits and that she thought the commissioners should speak directly to the team members to see what exactly they do.

Wheeler: “If the County did not come to the rescue, [the Street Outreach Team] would go away”

Wheeler also said she felt like the emails received over the weekend were “really misinformed, in terms of what we were actually trying to do. It makes me feel really bad that the community thinks that we were trying to do something awful when really, what we were trying to do is to have the discussion to make sure that this actually is continued on. If we did not fund this, if the County did not come to the rescue, it would go away… So I feel like we were misrepresented to the public… And it makes me feel like, you know, are we really partnering with somebody who cares about us, as an entity in the community? You know, I mean, you don’t bite the hand that feeds you, and I felt like that’s what was happening.”

Prizzia disagreed, saying that when staff presented the idea of taking it over “without having any conversations with the stakeholders who are running that program ahead of time–to me, that’s an ambush… I think that the reaction isn’t an ungrateful partner or person… I think it’s the reaction of someone who felt ambushed.” Prizzia said she was disappointed that the people writing emails didn’t recognize “that we are trying our best to fill a gap the City is creating” but added, “I just want to give them the benefit of the doubt; I agree with you, it wasn’t the best reaction, but also I can get why.”

County Manager Michele Lieberman said the idea to bring the program under the County came up in internal discussions among staff on the Sunday before the Monday meeting, “and the thought was only as an option because this was a program we already ran… for three years… We don’t want it to end, either, and not knowing where the Commission was going to be on that, they wanted to provide options. It was not to ambush anybody; it was to provide an option to maintain a program that was beneficial.”

Cornell: Emergency homeless shelter “should be one of the highest priorities of the City”

Cornell said he thought an emergency shelter “should be one of the highest priorities of the City… if not the very highest, one of the core services that the City provides.” He said the staff of GRACE, the City, and the County all need to work together to determine the best place for the Street Outreach team. He also suggested funding the team from CRA (Community Reinvestment Area) funds the County sends to the City every year: “We have not budgeted for an extra half a million dollars that [we decided to spend] last Monday night.” Cornell specifically did not want to take the funds from the amount the County budgeted for supportive permanent housing.

Cornell said he wanted to have a discussion with the City in the next budget year regarding their failure to fund GRACE as specified in the five-year agreement and that if they’re not willing to fund GRACE with at least $1.5 million a year, “then I think we have a bigger issue… I really don’t want to talk about anything else with the City of Gainesville until we resolve this issue: Are they going to support emergency shelter services, or are they not?” He said he would meet individually with each of the five members of the street outreach team as part of deciding whether it should move under the County. 

Prizzia disagreed on diverting CRA funds because “I think they’re really for economic development… and I’m not sure that us taking money that was supposed to be for economic redevelopment and channeling it to homeless services is the best option.” She pointed out that the County now has a Housing Trust Fund, as well as 30% of their Wild Spaces Public Places infrastructure surtax funds that have been set aside for affordable housing.

Cornell said he wants the City to “resolve the… agreement with GRACE. It’s a five-year agreement, it expires at the end of [FY24]. I want to know that they are committed to either continuing at $1.5 million, or increasing at $1.5 million, their commitment to GRACE… And then if they’re not committed to GRACE, and I mean 100%, like at a minimum of $1.5 million or more… then I would like to have a discussion about CRA.”

Prizzia: “I didn’t ever hear the City say that GRACE wasn’t a priority”

Prizzia said Cornell was “putting a lot of words in the City’s mouth… I didn’t ever hear the City say that GRACE wasn’t a priority… In fact, I’ve heard the Mayor again and again and again say that GRACE is his number one priority… But they had a major, major budget shortfall, they had to figure it out, and the City Manager had to come and make really difficult decisions… And they made GRACE a priority and got it into the budget at almost full funding.”

Cornell said, “I just want to see what they fund [next year]… You fund your priorities.” 

First motion

Alford made a motion to fund both the $150,000 and $350,000 requests from the City from CRA funds, but Crosby said he didn’t need a motion for the $150,000: “We can build it in as a one-time, one-year, period. Give it to the City, grant it to the City, however you want to phrase it.” However, he said he was hearing two different things about the $350,000 – a one-time use and a long-term solution to street outreach.

Crosby said as long as they were saying it’s a one-time allocation of $350,000 and that any ongoing funding for street outreach would “have to compete for dollars like everybody else in Fiscal Year 2025, then we have enough excess in ARPA funds, the vaccination program, to fund that amount.” Crosby later clarified that the funds were originally ARPA funds but had already been moved to the County’s General Fund, so they are no longer subject to the limitations on using ARPA funds. 

Amended motion

Alford amended the motion to fund $350,000 for the street outreach team, directly to GRACE, for this fiscal year and for staff to come back with a plan for a county-wide street outreach team, built in collaboration with stakeholders. Wheeler seconded the motion. 

During public comment, GRACE Executive Director Jon DeCarmine thanked them for supporting the project and apologized: “We did send out a Call to Action on Friday, and in that we had the line, something to the effect of ‘Here’s the problem: the County will not fund this program unless they take it over.’ We should have said ‘may not,’ we should have been less direct on that. And I’m offering my apology for that.” To give some context, he said he and his staff were surprised at the August 28 meeting when the idea arose of the County taking over the team, and in meetings after that, they got different interpretations of the motion from County staff and County Commissioners. He said County staff said they would get clarity at today’s meeting, but GRACE wanted their supporters to “have the chance to weigh in and let the County Commission know that they believe the outreach team should remain with GRACE.”

Prizzia winked at DeCarmine and suggested that he send out an email to GRACE’s supporters about the decision made today by the County.

The motion was approved 4-1, with Chestnut in dissent.