Alachua County Commission provides $150k to close GRACE funding gap, postpones decision on street outreach team to September 5

BY JENNIFER CABRERA

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – At a joint meeting on August 28, the Gainesville City Commission asked the Alachua County Commission to provide an additional $500,000 in funding for homeless services; the County Commission voted to provide $150,000 but postponed a decision on the rest until next week.

The first agenda item on the six-hour joint meeting was the City’s funding gap between the amount they’ve budgeted for homeless services and the amount of money needed to provide those services.

An August 8 letter from Gainesville Mayor Harvey Ward to Alachua County Commission Chair Anna Prizzia said the City is facing “a challenging budget season” and asked that the County “specifically include funding to GRACE Marketplace” to keep the local safety net intact. The letter said Ward was “reticent to include dollar figures, both because the amount we will be able to fund is not definite and because if you are able to exceed the bare minimum, outcomes will likely be improved.”

However, at Prizzia’s request, the City provided specific amounts; regarding those numbers, Ward said at the joint meeting that in the past, the City would sometimes say, “Well, this is all the money we have, but we really have some set aside. This is not that year for the City of Gainesville… Those are real, honest-to-goodness numbers.”

City and County entering fifth year of five-year agreement

Gainesville City Manager Cynthia Curry said the City and County entered into a five-year agreement in which the City provides $1.5 million for homeless services and the County provides $1.5 million in permanent supportive housing. She said there is a gap this year of $450,000 for GRACE operations because the City could only budget $1,050,000. She added that the City has also funded street outreach projects from one-time funding sources such as the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA).

Jon DeCarmine, the Executive Director of GRACE, said that because the City allowed GRACE to repurpose a $300,000 grant, the gap for GRACE operations is now only $150,000. However, the street outreach program’s ARPA funding runs out on November 30, and that program needs $350,000 to continue operating past that date. DeCarmine concluded, “So the total maximum request that we will be asking for is a total of $500,000.”

County Commissioner Ken Cornell said he had received 106 emails from community members, all in support of GRACE, but before making a decision, he wanted to understand the current agreement between the City, the County, and GRACE to fund homeless services. Curry said she believed there had been two amendments to the original 2019 contract that called for the City and County to each provide $1.5 million per year, but she didn’t have them handy.

Cornell said he was in favor of supporting GRACE and making sure they get the full $1.5 million they need, but he wanted to talk to staff about the County taking over the street outreach. DeCarmine, however, was alarmed at that suggestion and said it was the first he’d heard of that.

Cornell: “I’d like the City to fulfill their obligation”

Cornell said he’d “like the City to fulfill their obligation” of $1.5 million. City Commissioner Reina Saco, who was attending remotely, said she wanted the County Commission to consider covering the gap in funding for the last year of the five-year agreement; she said she was open to conversations about the County becoming more involved in street outreach, but she didn’t support changing how services are provided with just a month left in the process of finalizing budgets. She asked the County Commission to consider covering the $500,000 gap.

Ward said, “I just would briefly remind everyone that… what we’re talking about is how we serve or do not serve folks who don’t have any other choice. That’s the bottom line here.” He also said the City and County are “not co-equal partners when it comes to the size of our budgets. We are simply not. We often act as if that were the case, but the City does not have the same funding available.”

Funding would bring back 10 beds at GRACE

In response to a question from City Commissioner Cynthia Chestnut, DeCarmine said the $150,000 would allow GRACE to bring back the ten beds they have cut in response to the City’s funding reduction. 

In response to a question from County Commissioner Mary Alford about the advantages and disadvantages of the County taking over street outreach, DeCarmine said it was “shocking to us to be hearing about this for the first time at a public meeting.” He said County staff had indicated that the goal would be “to provide stability to the outreach team and services to the entire county. Funding from the County, without taking over the team, would provide that exact same benefit. Knowing that we have the funding would provide the stability… I don’t see any advantage in disrupting a working team.” DeCarmine pointed out that the County previously did studies showing that “it could not do what GRACE did for the same price. And, in fact, it could deliver lower outcomes for a higher cost.”

Prizzia: “I feel like it is not too much to ask us to come in with $150,000 to make up the gap”

Prizzia said she thought the street outreach program “should go county-wide” because “a lot of our homeless are kind of drifting to sites just outside the city limits and especially around the interstates and those kinds of places.” She favored providing stability to the current team and taking time to look at a county-wide system for street outreach. She thanked the City for funding GRACE at 90%, “which is admirable considering the budget crunch and the budget constraints that you’re under. I’m impressed, and I am grateful that you took this as a core service and that you did the work to get it funded, and I feel like it is not too much to ask us to come in with $150,000 to make up the gap.” She said that because of inflation, it was “crazy” to have a five-year agreement with no increase in funding.

County Commissioner Chuck Chestnut was confused about the amount of money requested, saying he had heard both $150,000 and $500,000. DeCarmine clarified that there were two different amounts: $150,000 for GRACE itself and $350,000 for the street outreach team. 

Alford supported fully funding both requests. Cornell said he would be okay with asking staff to find $350,000 for street outreach if the City could find the $150,000 for GRACE. 

Ward: “We already found that extra money; we did our piece of it”

Ward responded that the City had started at $750,000, and “we knew this needed better than that $750,000. There are people we’re firing in our organization. We already found that extra money; we did our piece of it. We’re at 90% funding, and we’re asking for the additional 10%… I wasn’t kidding before when I said this is what we have.” He said he had started the conversation with the County back in “February, March… letting you know this was likely to happen… This is not new. It’s better than it was a few weeks ago, but I don’t know where we’re going to come up with another $150,000 at this point.”

Prizzia said the $150,000 “is not very much to ask.” She pointed out that a number of people in the room were wearing “Choose Peace” shirts from the Gun Violence Summit in anticipation of the next agenda item on gun violence, “and we’re cutting youth services and the Interruptors program at the City. Like, they’re cutting the programs that are literally doing the work to go out and solve the problem that we’re going to talk about in a minute. So if they can’t even fund those, which is crazy–I mean, that is a crisis that they’re seeing… They cut that, they found 90% of GRACE, and they’re asking for $150,000. It’s not very much money. It’s something that we can do to help the least of our community who are struggling the most.” She said the County could also manage the $350,000, “and then we can ask our staff to take the time to do the analysis” to expand the street outreach team county-wide. 

Chuck Chestnut: “Well, I’ll support the $150,000, but I can’t support the $350,000”

Chuck Chestnut was again confused about the amount: “So what are we talking about? $150,000 or $500,000? The charity’s saying $150,000.” After the two amounts were again explained, he said, “Well, I’ll support the $150,000, but I can’t support the $350,000”; he said he could support the “compromise” of moving the street outreach team under the County. “I know the City has trouble. But then my problem is–how do I know how they’re spending their money? I don’t know that. As a County Commissioner, I don’t know how GRACE Marketplace is spending their money, where it’s going, how it’s going, what audits have occurred, all that kind of stuff… I’ll support $150,000… That’s where I stand, and that’s where I’m going to stay.”

DeCarmine said GRACE’s audits for the past four years have returned “zero findings, zero concerns, very few even recommendations for improvement.” He said the audits are sent to the City and County Commissions every year.

First motion

Alford made a motion for the County to provide $500,000, with $150,000 going toward the GRACE budget and $350,000 to the street outreach program. She added a request to staff to come back with recommendations and a financial analysis of a future Continuum of Care if the County took it over. 

Chuck Chestnut said they needed to talk to their budget staff because the County Commission also has some unfunded priorities: “I mean, it’s like we’re making a hasty decision here… I don’t like doing things on the fly like this.”

Prizzia agreed that the board needed to have a conversation at their September 5 meeting, but “I didn’t get the sense that this was going to make or break us being able to do anything else that we want to do.”

Commissioner Marihelen Wheeler said she would prefer to talk about the issue on September 5, and County Manager Michele Lieberman agreed: “This board gave us a list of items that you wanted to fund as additional items that were not in the budget… So we have a whole list of items we need to bring to you, and that may require some decisions.”

Second motion

Lacking a second for the first motion, Cornell made a second motion: The first part was to provide one-time funding of $150,000. Saying, “The $350,000, I think, is actually critically important… How that happens, I want to leave to our staff,” he added a second part to ask staff to bring back a recommendation at the September 5 meeting for an additional $350,000 for street outreach funding for next year and “work with City and County staff to figure out either a transition, an outsource to the City, or ultimately the County take that over.” At Alford’s suggestion, he added GRACE to the group working on that. Wheeler seconded the motion.

The motion passed 4-0, with Alford out of the room.