Back into the starting lineup for Miami. Here's Rosie here. Cradles, it gets reshifted by Darren White. Celtics highlights are presented by Metro by T-Mobile.


Hello, this is Ray Pake, the community manager at GitLab, and welcome to the wrap-up session of the Q3 hackathon. Let me put the slide in the presentation mode so people can see it better. Yeah, so it's been exciting two days. I think in some time zones, like especially in Asia Pacific, it's already the 30th, but over the two days, 28th and 29th, it's been good to see community members really get engaged. And we had record number of merger requests submitted for the hackathon, which I'll get to in a minute, which was really exciting. But also a lot of interaction on GitR and issues and others where people were collaborating and helping each other out. That was really, really fun to see. So like we've always done with each of the hackathons, just wanted to have a quick recap of how things have gone over the past two days. And also wanted to talk quickly about some of the recognitions that we typically do for our contributors. And just wanted to give you an idea. I mean, obviously people who have MRs merged will get an award or a prize following the event. But I mean, there are other ways that we try to recognize regular contributors as well and love to get your feedback on that through GitR or other channels. First of all, a quick recap and big thank you to all the presenters and those who participated in a number of tutorial sessions that we had. All the links to recordings and slides are available on the main hackathon page. You see the link there. You see a table of all the contents under sessions. You'll see a little snippet of the video along with the presentations right below it that you can check out at your leisure. And there's also the hackathon playlist on YouTube. So all of the tutorial sessions from this hackathon and past hackathons that you should be able to find and view. But I mean, I think we have a lot of good speakers this time around and definitely want to keep this going for future hackathons. And if you have suggestions for topics and speakers that you want to you want to hear from, please let us know. In terms of MRs, I briefly mentioned this, you'll see the screenshot of the issue number 24, we're keeping track of all the MRs. When I created this slide a little earlier today I said 80 plus but I think we've actually may have hit like 90 right before I got on the call. The previous record was 67 in Q1 and I mean we just, it looks like we just shattered the record. So I definitely want to thank everyone for that. I think during the kickoff session. I think I may have made a comment about I'd like to get to the heights that we were in Q1 but we not only met it but we way surpassed it so congratulations everybody and thank you for a job well done. And out of the 90 or so MRs. Last time I checked there were about 20 or so MRs that were already merged. As of about an hour ago. So I assume that will continue over the next few days. And as in the past I mean the MRs came for, I mean several different projects whether it's CENEE that everybody is already familiar with but other projects like design.gitlab.com I was happy that people contributing to UI after the tutorial session we had. GDK, runner, triage, get to Lee, our website, etc, etc. Definitely appreciate everybody contributing to various projects that we have at Gitlab. So that was great to see. But if I happen to be missing your MRs and it's very possible my inbox is being getting inundated with the new MRs coming in. So in case I missed it, I mean please ping me on Gitter at our peak and or even on the issue itself. Just let me know if I'm missing something from the list and I'll be happy to add it to the list so that you get credit for those. Just a couple of reminders and I guess an announcement in terms of prizes. Anybody with a merge MR will receive that power bank that you see on the bottom left of the slide. And there's a grand prize for people who have the most MRs merged by September 10th. And there'll also be a second prize winner as well. So the deadline again is September 10th at 2300 UTC. If you have any questions or any help like moving things along in terms of reviews or things getting or to get things merged. I mean please ping me or David on on Gitter and then we'll do our best to help sort of move things along. Also excited to announce the dates for the next hackathon. We'll get back together in mid November. So 13 and 14 should be Thursday and Thursday that week like we're doing now. But look for official announcements as we get closer to us November. Look for usual channels on on on Gitter or Reddit or or even on the Twitter feed. So you should see us Twitter either for me or get live going out in terms of announcements. Obviously like I said this has been a great and fun event. It's sort of good to see people sort of come back from summer vacation and and and the volume of the work and collaboration that I've been seeing a amount of collaboration that I've been seeing has been pretty impressive. But if you have any feedback on the event like on the topics for tutorial session for the next hackathon or or any logistical things that you want to see improve for the next event please let me and David now be really happy to hear your feedback on on on how we can do things better next time around. I mean speaking of prizes. I mean obviously if you participated in hackathon either this time around or previously you you've probably seen various awards that we've been we've been sending out to people who have been submitting M.R.s during the event. But there are several other ways that we typically recognize contributors and just wanted to share a few examples with you on all the way on the left. I mean some of you may have received this mug and we started this campaign about a year ago when you have your first M.R. merge. We send this camper mag with a camper mug with a hashtag and number of people have posted fun pictures on Twitter and actually if you let me get out of the presentation mode. If you click on this link basically shows you a search result on on Twitter where people have been celebrating the mug. So I mean that's one example and and then the other initiative that we we started was to sort of recognize some of the regular contributors and we published this website. Earlier this year I think sometime in Q1 if you click on this link it'll take you to the actual page. We wanted to celebrate people that have had at least five or more M.R.s merged during the calendar year and and we put them in like a three different categories. Superstar star and enthusiasts depending on your contribution level. And we've also sent out Gillab theme merchandise for for different contribution levels. You'll see a couple of examples here. I mean what we're thinking of doing going forward is rather than wait until like January February to publish this list. I think throughout the year for example for 2019 I think I'll go ahead and publish the list as of a certain date and so you can people can see sort of where they stand and and even see the progress as a hopefully move up the ranks some during the year. So hopefully in the next several weeks you'll see an updated page with the list of 2019 regular contributors. And hopefully you'll see more evidence of this on on social media like Twitter as well. So that's one of the other things that we started earlier this year. What's been going on for a long time is released MVP or the GitLab Hall of Fame. For each release we nominate one community member as as that month's most valuable person. Have a couple of screenshots. I mean one you'll you'll see this page when you click click on this link as well. So it gives you a running list of all the MVP winners for following each release and this also gets highlighted during our release post. I mean every time we do a release we publish a release post in our blog section. And this is sort of an example of our last month's MVP Fabio for to celebrate a lot of great work that he's done for us. So this is another way so we we recognize a lot of the regular contributors who's been making great contributions to the community. So just wanted to highlight some of these. We're obviously thinking and looking for ways to to recognize our code contributors in a variety of ways. So if you have any feedback or thoughts or suggestions I mean please do let me know. But I mean this is probably one of the more fun part of the job seeing community members get recognized. So just want to share that with everyone as well. I think that's sort of that's the last slide. I mean again I want to thank you for your enthusiasm energy. Hopefully at least in the northern hemisphere hopefully everybody had a good summer and it's good to see or hear from you again after the summer period here in the northern hemisphere. And I definitely look forward to doing this again in November. And thanks again and I'll talk to you again soon. Thank you.


And God says, it's enough. I can work with what's left. God does not need what you lost in order for Him to do the miracle. So don't be crying over what you lost. Begin to focus on what you have left. Begin to ask God, well, what do I have left that you can work with? What is that that you can use in my life that's left? Whether it's a gift, whether it's a talent, whether maybe it's a little bit of savings that you have left. What is that I can surrender to you? What is that I can give to you that you could use?


at i've been in the field for over 30 years i've been on all sides of rfps when there's not enough money to fund a large needs in a community there's always concerns and controversy because there's just not enough money to give out to everybody who does good work one thing that happened after the first we came forward in june with the recommended awards there was a lot of questions that came saying how could agencies that are doing important work in our community not get recommended for awards and then there's a lot of looking under the hood to say it must be the panel it must be the scoring rubik it must be a lot of questions about what happened in the process an rfp process is essentially a best application wins process unless there is additional direction from our elected officials to apply priorities values or to carve out certain things from applications so we actually ran a process that was very competitive there was more than three times the amount of applications than available funding and almost 50 of the applications came from new organizations that had never had an opportunity to receive funding before and we believe that what came out of this and what to apply lessons learned is not going to be found in looking at the actual rfp process itself and will speak to how to apply some of the concerns that was raised in the the proposed next steps the second of four areas of misunderstanding was there was a lot of concerns about a couple of particular programs serving older adults that were not funded so i wanted to share a couple of pieces of information to clarify so first there was actually a $250,000 increase in the amount of awards going to programs serving older adults that actually represented a 2% increase and i think it could be argued it's not enough given the aging population or community but the last round of core contracts 21% of the money went to older adults and the current round of contracts 23% of the money goes to older adults there's actually an increase in the amount of services there's just some new providers delivering services to the population and second i think it's important to recognize that your board in the city council only recommended two carve outs two priorities there's only two organizations that were prioritized to not have to compete for funding both were older adult programs one was a carve out of administrative match dollars for the area aging sound aging that was removed from competitive procurement and second your board made a very clear statement that because the area agency on aging was in the process of a procurement themselves for the meals on wheels program and meals on wheels is a priority for this community that you directed us to pull that out of competitive procurement and to award the money to whoever the triple a selects so there's only two directions from your board to prioritize a population both for older adults the third is a concept of safety net cuts and i want to share that in the lessons learned effort we heard a lot of people have a lot of different definitions for what a safety net is so that's part of the issue is trying to get a common definition for safety net one thing that i think is important to recognize and it's really interesting that we're following health in the comments from your board about the lack of prevention services and when safety net is only after the fact when people are deeply in the safety net you miss the opportunity to provide prevention so a lot of what the movement is trying to include in the safety net prevention opportunities so that we do more upstream investment so that was part of what was built into this last round there was a $500,000 increase in general fund to the base funding which was actually an 11% increase in funding into the safety net and the other is there was an agreement discussed in community with your board to create for the first time ever a larger grant opportunity called targeted impact which was a $750,000 one grant focused on equity and that did pull money from the base but it was by design with community and with your board's approval and then the last of the misunderstanding areas was there were some questions about the role of our consultant group and particularly some questions about whether or not they had any role and actually making selections of the applicants and I wanted to clarify a little bit of the history of that the consultants that are in place and in support of this effort that work with us in human services are a contract that is a direction from the board of supervisors when the first procurement was put in place and we were directed to specifically identify a contractor who had nothing to do directly with us as the funder to initiate community conversations about how to apply lessons learned going forward so it was by board direction that a consultant group was hired and that's optimal solutions and in the lessons learned process we two things to highlight one is we fire walled the consultants out of all decision making and their role was narrowly focused on helping us with admin support we were at a time when we were at the highest vacancy rates we've ever experienced we had some analysts out we lost one of our director positions so they played a role in hoarding supporting the administration of this and as we'll speak to later it was one of the highest um uh recognitions in the lessons learned feedback that the consultants work to help provide technical assistance to community-based organizations to be competitive was one of the most valued parts of the work of the consultants so they had no role in making any decisions and the work that they did helped us administratively and was valued by the cbo's who benefited from their technical assistance so hopefully we bring these up to you so that there's not a misunderstanding of what these issues were as we think about policy issues going forward so this leads to the next slide so what worked um all the agencies actually said they recognized that the engagement the number of opportunities to give feedback seeing some of their ideas in the rfp was valued and it was recognized this is not normal practice it's not my normal practice usually rfps are issued without community feedback so there was a high value placed on uh having community engagement continue um equity um if you look at the uh picture of core it was earlier in the slides equity is a picture and a symbol at the center of the core conditions of well-being model and we spent a lot of time in community engagement talking about how do you operationalize equity and we actually in conversations with community agreed that for this application round the community-based organizations would be the one's best position to tell us what the inequities are in the community how their application would help address that inequity and then those who are awarded those um were built into the scope of work of their current contracts this um will not we will not be able to provide details about the outcomes until the yearly reports come in which happened in the fall so i want to make sure that equity was recognized by the stakeholder feedback is something critical to keep at the center of the next round of procurement some technical issues um this was the first time we had an online application process the cbo said this was very helpful and they wanted to keep that um those who participated in the panel said that the format was very helpful the training was very helpful and i will tell you many people who participated in many rfp panels said it was one of the best organized and the best trained they were so they could be very objective in participating as a panel member and then as i said earlier there's a lot of recognition appreciation for the consultant's technical assistants who helped a number of the cbo's position themselves to be more competitive in the application process to the next slide so here is some proposed adjustments that come from some constructive feedback from the process so first um much like there was a recognition that some of the concerns that was raised some of the misunderstandings were raised that sort of drowned out the what worked there was also a recognition that there were a number of community-based organizations who newly applied and for the first time ever received grants and their opportunity to be celebrated and recognized was lost so there was a real request to make sure to have a broader recognition of all that happened including the good things that happened in the process second because of covid and the omicron variant and the delays this rfp process the last time was pushed too close to the end of the um the cycle of funding and the budget season so strong feedback which we support to start the rfp process earlier the next is i think probably the most complicated and i anticipate i can't speak for you as elected officials but i anticipate will be a complicated one for you it is for us it is for community we only have whatever amount of money we can add to this pot or maintain the pot if there's not more money we have to make some choices there's not enough money there was three times the amount of applications there were dollars so there was a lot of recognition maybe we need to have community engagement and board direction to prioritize certain programs certain policies certain core conditions well-being like your direction to carve out money for meals on wheels so that it's not as wide open best application in wins process um number of cbo said um boy this was very complicated applying for core those applications were very detailed and boy is there any way you can make them easier so we will make strides on that um the cbo's asked if we could give more detail in the application itself about what is being scored at a more detail than we did before i think with more time we'll be able to do this um and then the other was a real push and i want to recommend this was actually from south county to please make sure that we could have more panel diversity that fully represented the agency um and in the full county and i think we have ideas that we can make sure this happens so with that said i'm going to turn over to kim kimberley to close out the presentation thanks so as you just heard randy described throughout the core throughout core stakeholder engagement and community feedback has been an integral part of the process um supporting long-term collective impact and centering of equity in the core movement and different iterations of the rfp throughout this process we've heard many voices before during and after the last rfp um only some of which was heard broadly in the public and some of which was summarized by randy um though in our lessons we also feel like it's important for us to do its part to lift up the multiple voices that we've heard um including those that we heard that were constructive and critical um and we felt one of the most effective ways to communicate those voices was providing a forum for you to hear directly from a sampling of some of them next slide please so today we have three executive directors dedicated women in their fields and each with different experiences and lenses to the core process and different outcomes from the process one representing an agency that lost funding compared to prior years another that gained additional funding compared to prior years and another agency that was newly funded they have agreed to share their perspective with you today and so with that i'd like to first introduce monica martinez executive director of encompass community services good morning chair and members of the board my name is monica martinez and i'm ceo of encompass community services a core funded program i'm also a member of the core steering committee and i'm a former member of the human services commission so i've witnessed the progression of community programs and core funding for over a decade and my feedback on this process has been consistent as a vital part of the safety net we have to have the courage to change the status quo and respond to emerging community needs encompass is the largest health and human services nonprofit in santa cruz county and we are one of the agencies that were historically funded through community programs in fact we received more funding than all other agencies so we had the most to lose when the county was considering a change to core however as a health equity organization we recognize that the old approach was not working it was not responsive to emerging needs it did not promote equity and it left behind those who are most in need the status quo was not working so despite the fact that encompass could potentially lose funding we chose to be create courageous and lean into change over the last five years we attended countless focus groups feedback sessions board hearings and technical assistance hosted by nicole leasant and nicole young and as an agency we began preparing for the potential core funding changes we use this as an opportunity to align our services with the many other changes that are happening in the health and human services landscape public funding isn't static there are rapid changes happening in medicow through calaim and policy changes in criminal justice education and health care the impact public priorities and revenue streams like most of my nonprofit colleagues here at encompass we're extremely skilled and experienced at being responsive to community needs and a changing revenue landscape so as a result of the core funding change encompass did lose some of our historic funding but i trust that through this process that that funding was reallocated to meet other needs within our shared community encompass also did receive three new grants for new programs and i'm very proud of the way that our work has adapted to the changing needs and the changing funding streams today you are reviewing the core process and i want to share that our experience we experienced that the process was accountable inclusive approach challenging questions with curiosity and centered equity in the conversations was it perfect i think we can all agree and we're hearing that there were areas for improvement for example i hope that future changes will further support the capacity building of very small agencies who work hard to meet community need but are largely volunteer led so they may not have the infrastructure to support to successfully navigate a large rfp process without help small organizations like the ones serving the sand Lorenzo valley were left behind in the process and we need to ensure that they have the support they need to serve slv residents and in the spirit of meeting emerging needs i think we also need to adapt the next rfp process to take into consideration the community's most hit by recent natural disasters and winter storms and support the organizations who have stepped up to serve those communities in their moment of immediate crisis and also the ongoing recovery efforts but most importantly i hope the board will continue to support core to evolve and improve as a community impact model i know firsthand that there are limited resources to meet incredible human need so i asked that you continue to take a continuous quality improvement approach to listen to the community review the data and continue to improve and advance the core process thank you for your commitment to serving our community thank you thank you monica so now i'd like to introduce um maria lena de la garza she's the executive director of community action board and she's unable to be with us in chamber so she would she's um on zoom welcome maria maria lena hi good morning buenos dias almost buenas tardes i am maria lena de la garza i'm the executive director to the community action board of santa cruz county and i want to express my gratitude for allowing me to voice cabs experience in this process we were one of the agencies that grew through the core process and i feel that the the partnership and the commitment of the county to move us forward has been incredibly important and significant in transitioning and transforming the core process through the years you know i want to start off with what monica just said public funding isn't static and i would say community needs aren't static either and and so with that the the transformation of the core process has been incredibly important i too have been part of the steering committee and and i was involved in conversations uh that that started you know over five years ago in how we were going to shift this process and i want to say that i'm really proud of the work that we've done together in centering equity in the conversations and i'll tell you board of supervisors it has not been an easy conversation when we look back five years ago when we first started to have the conversation it was difficult it was uncomfortable it was um uh prickly yet we all continue to show up and be present and move through the conversation together um i can tell you that the impact of cab and the equity work has been significant over the past five years you know you though those of you who know us well know that we have grown to ensure that all levels of our agency reflect the community that we serve including our board of directors you who know us well know that we use culturally competent best and promising practices um and those of you who know us well know that we have an agency-wide equity policy statement and that is the ground work the ground floor of the work that we do together in the core in the core process in the core relationships you know the core process and the core grants allowed cab to increase our work with the immigrant community it allowed allowed cab to increase our work with employment support for those who have significant barriers in in achieving a job and career development it allowed us to support rental renters by providing rental assistance and support for our transitional aging youth and it also allowed us to support our youth programs in Davenport on the north coast and and i will tell you that that work in this support has incredible implications in our equity in how we serve this community and in the services that are being provided to those who are most vulnerable especially right now with flood response and crisis response and so i want to echo Monica's words words you know has this process been perfect absolutely not um have we made progress absolutely we have and i am incredibly grateful about that progress i'll tell you that that the conversations in in in within those five years about racial justice about a quick forming questions around what we as an agency looked like and and how do did we how were we going to ensure that we represented the community we're part of those conversations talking about how do we build equity capacity for all the cbo's and our county partners and taking advantage and as randy stated at the beginning that technical and technical assistance that support that was given to the cbo's we were meeting with the consultants because we knew we needed support i mean cab has been around for over 57 years and we still knew we needed support and so it was incredibly important to have those touch points across the process and i want to continue to advocate as we look into the future to make sure that those those steps are in are put in place i want to express my gratitude to the core team and to the core partnership and to our carney county partners and i want to celebrate today today in that cab along with all those other agencies you saw on that slide you know celebrate the success of the core process and i want to challenge us right we're not done we're not done we're just starting i want us i want to challenge us to continue holding equity in the center of the of the conversation and how do we continue to build guardrails to ensure that there's accountability for equity that there's accountability for ensuring that service provision is centered around equity how do we normalize that representation matters on all levels of levels of our agency and how do we ensure that all touch points in the core process include centering equity from pre-creation in the application to review of the rfps and working with the selection committee to the implementation and account accountability for services we still have work to do and cab along with all the other community-based organizations are committed to do the work we are in in the two in the north coast and in south county and i want i want to express my gratitude for the continued support the augmentation of support to ensure that equity happened through the core process and our agency thank you thank you mariela thank you so we have one more guest speaker and that is kisha broder she's the executive director of united way santa cruz county thank you kisha thank you well let's see it's probably still good morning uh board of supervisors um i i stand here and while i can share the greatness i want to let you know the realities of those misunderstandings united way has been in this community since 1941 and this was our first time we were uh that we applied for this core funding it was our first time winning a moment that should have been celebrated was marred i received very vile disgusting threats on my voicemail racial epithets on my voicemail due to misunderstandings about this core process so a moment that should have been celebrated in our community a moment that our united way should have been proud because we stand here committed to knowing and understanding that when our communities are doing well it's because of our youth doing well that was taken not only was it taken from my staff as an organization those calls were personal personal attacks on me about my race that's not the santa cruz county i know and just as i have not quit on this community i am confident that you won't quit on this process i thank you for this opportunity to raise up the awardees from the core because it was shadowed it was it was overshadowed and i i am looking forward to continuing to work with core to continue to work with the county so that no other leader has to experience what i had to experience last year on my voicemails as a result of core it's one thing to be upset about funding i can handle that you can talk about whether you like us or not and all of those things those are opinions but when they become personal racial motivated hated vile disgusting attacks that's not the santa cruz county i know that's not the santa cruz county i said yes to to move here from south carolina i know we're better than that as a community i know we're better than that as human beings and so from there i'm again i thank you for this opportunity because we didn't get the chance to share our voice we didn't get the chance to celebrate the good the new is it perfect no it can stand to be perfected and we will do that with core but i stand boldly and understanding and helping you to understand that when we serve our youth and the the intergenerational approach that our initiative has with cradle to career core give us the ability to take it and replicate it from what it started in live oak to serve from the san lorenzo valley to the paharo valley we stand bold in that we stand strong in that we stand with the other awardees and know that we will continue to send their equity we will continue to move forward as we're talking about earlier with health and syringes and looking at our young people and the fentanyl our young people need us they need that cradle to career model that we will be supportive along the continuum and what i hope for is that by the end of our cohort we'll be able to show our young people that again the folks who left those nasty voicemails on our on my phone do not represent the spirit and the heart and the value that's here in santa cruz county so i wish i had a more happy report to share but i'm being vulnerable and sharing with you the real existence of how those misunderstandings went from being upset about something to how it showed up how it showed up for some of us in our community so again thank you for uplifting those of us who who did get this award who did take time we just like marielena said we've been around since 1941 and we still attended those technical assistance because we still needed to know and understand what we were looking at our united way has been able to leverage the core conditions and actually create a strategic plan for our organization that has been replicated in other grant funding for our community this core process has been able to have us think differently and move differently as a community and like i said just as i have not quit on this county due to those small number of people who left those disgusting voicemails on on my office phone i know that you won't quit on us either with this core process together we will perfect it and get to the core values of our community thank you thank you actually if i may miss broader if you wouldn't mind i have a brief question on that first let me just say you're a community treasure and it needs to be said you're a beautiful person you're a community treasure also sending love for my wife who you know loves you very much let me let me ask you a question because some of what you are talking about is maybe a little inside baseball for people who are watching at home or the media that's here there are those in the community including community-based organizations that would like to move us back to a time um by which the funding was done 40 years ago or 30 years ago where new new organizations like yours or a number of the ones that the miss martina spoke to couldn't even compete for funding because but frankly they didn't have to compete it was guaranteed money and they could push out other organizations not a statement on whether or not they were doing something valuable or not but what would you say to this body what would you say to those that are asking us to go back to a time when that's the way that we did this allocation of funding what would your statement be on that then we want new results we have to try new things and it's okay to do things differently our cradle to career initiative gave me the opportunity to bring on even more staff staff of color to reflect the communities we serve I would never have the opportunity to do that if we continued on the business as usual path so change is hard change is uncomfortable and change is necessary as we continue to evolve as a community when we look back and understand who we're responding to where our people are living where we work live and play we're from one valley to the next we're from San Lorenzo Valley to Pajaro Valley and equity is in all of those areas so to do that we have to change we have to evolve we have to create that space for new programs like a cradle to career model to come in and address the new needs the emerging needs in our community thank you thank you very much Keisha Maria Elena and Monica um next slide please so um in addition to those very powerful lessons learned um highlighted here today and by Randy earlier and the importance of lifting voices another big takeaway for us was the need to start the RFP process much sooner so what you're looking at here is a timeline that we're proposing for preparing for the next RFP we would with your approval of this timeline which is one of the recommended actions today we'll start the community engagement this summer public hearings will be a part of that as will conversations about values and priorities some feedback provided last June and during lessons learned revealed the desire of some to prioritize certain services funding options or carve outs for various reasons and clearly naming those values in advance will be critical to the design of the RFP the RFP would be released in the spring with applications due in the summer with a report back to the board on any trends that we see in the applications then the recommended awards would happen in the fall of winter and fall or winter of 2024 providing a long runway for programs newly funded and those whose funding will not continue at the start of fiscal year 2025 when the new contracts would begin this concludes our presentation and we are happy to answer any questions thank you other questions before we open it up for community conversation the supervisor coning thank you chair thank you for the presentations from our three executive directors here you know one thing that was highlighted was emerging community needs and you know it was also said there's a lot of demands for this 4.8 million dollars every year and you know one very clear emerging need that we're seeing now is disaster response right i mean i hope that we get this additional funding from the state um but i mean i'm i'm curious i mean sort of rhetorical question if you have the answer it's great but i mean how many of our core funded organizations participated in disaster response you know as we went through these 31 atmospheric river events and i know that many of them did show up whether or not that was part of their explicit funding mandate or not i mean i saw you turning your microphone on so if you haven't answered well i i feel like much like was the purpose of us lifting up community-based voices i don't think we should get in the way of them we have a number of organizations here i can just say from what i see the network of community-based organizations is critical to the safety net and they have shown up in a big way and much like we don't get funded and have to split ourselves three times over so do our community-based organizations who arguably don't have the benefit of as big a system as us so i just would maybe i don't know if you want to wait chair or supervisor conig to tell the comment but they are a huge part of the network of disaster response systems and often not even funded to do so yeah thank you and i know we're moving towards more explicit memorandums of understanding with some of our community-based organizations and with the office of response recovery and resilience specifically i think that'll certainly be helpful uh not only for those organizations but i mean for the rest of the county or as an organization for us as board members for us communicating what services are available to constituents during a disaster um you know but just wanted to highlight this as something we're going to have to i think look at with a little bit more detail in the next round of funding because i mean it's clear these disasters are not going away um and just like the county there's only so much we can ask organizations to do with with no funding right we can only push uh goodwill can only give us so far um i mean the other thing i would highlight is that um it's an issue that comes up again and again is our need for just more basic shelter services for people experiencing homelessness uh and i mean when you look throughout our county budget where that money could potentially come from i mean ultimately these are our discretionary funds this is probably the best not only source of funding for increasing shelter and temporary housing solutions so i think we've got to keep that top of mind as well as we look at the next round of this funding so i mean i think that maybe both of those points ultimately could be addressed by um reserving more of the total poor funding award to maybe a portion that's explicitly discretionary for the board i think in a way of this the process being proposed today provides more of an opportunity for that anyway because you know we're going to review the the suggested award so much earlier it'll create more space and time for us to consider what also ultimately gets funded and balance some of these priorities and needs um i appreciate that suggests a change in the schedule i mean of course you're also effectively building in that transition time so that if the program was open i haven't been funded in the new round there's six months where they can address their staffing and program accordingly or find other funding sources if i may chair if i could just make a comment because i think this is on point to what all of your board members and public comment to piggyback off of where kim really ended over the next six seven months there's actually three things i heard you say and we are going to take notes and we are going to track all of those we would really like to do this with the community and then come back to you and i know it's an ideal that cannot be achieved but we'd like to get closer to coming back as staff with community with a values priority discussion so the three things i heard disaster responses are here to stay community-based organizations are doing amazing work often on their own dime and maybe that should be looked at number two the shelter crisis one of the core conditions of well-being is housing and shelter it's not changing the framework that's an example of part of what we probably should talk about with community to see if we can come back with some priorities that we share with the community i don't know if we will and third and to recognize now chair friend and supervisor friend he said at the last june hearing what i heard you say supervisor conig maybe we need to have in the next rfp a percentage of money carved out so the board can see the recommended awards and then the board has some option to sort of see what to do with that all of that can be built into the next seven eight months and this discussion will help us as staff to work with community-based organizations to have those dialogue and then come back to you in december with hopefully some consensus or leaning so that we don't just throw it all up to you and say tell us what to do there's not enough money so i hope that's on point i think that just framed exactly what we're looking for and what we will do in the months ahead good summary thank you supervisor mckerson i want to thank the human services department for analyzing the core process and providing um the lessons learned uh overview um and thank you to our non-profit leaders too and our community partners who provided feedback on the core process um with the shared goal of improving our system of uh allocating this public funding in ways that can provide a greater transparency and accountability i think an earlier start is really well well a very good first step and uh i'd also appreciate the work of the multiple departments to identify um the non-core funding um that could assist organizations that were not recommended for core funding there's no way that they can please them all uh when you have a third of the funding that you want to allocate or the demands are there to have to receive an allocation and uh we're going to go through a tough budget session at the end of next month uh it's not as rosy as it has been in the past few years so it's going to be even more challenging in some respects um but the bridge funding provided by the county to organizations was um not those who were not selected demonstrate our community um supporting the work uh we we gave uh five hundred thousand dollars uh for adjustments uh create a targeted equity uh an equity and safety net became the go words for what we should do with the funding that we have and to become became much more prominent in our decisions that we had to make and so i uh i have every confidence that county is going to continue this effort to view core as an uh iterative process it can be responsive to the emerging needs i think you've seen that the adjustments that are needed and you've identified those and we have in the process over this core process it was a big change so it's understandable that there was some there was some displeasure very very disheartening to hear how to what extent that was expressed to some of our people that really are public service kings and queens of this uh of this county so um i i know we're going to hear some more public input but i would be ready to make a motion at their appropriate time but you Mr. Chair if you'd prefer to have more public input we'll do that thank you yes we definitely need some more additional public input uh Suvez or Hernandez yes uh first of all thank all the nonprofits and cbo's and especially all the ones that really helped out during all the floodings that flooding that we had in south county uh it was i want to you know recognize that it was the cbo's that came out before anyone came out right before before the uh FEMA assistance came before the state came out so i want to thank all the cbo's that that uh stepped up and did that um and so my comment is uh i want to make sure that diversity inclusion equity are not just words and that we actually uh make it um you know really something that is more than just words and so in in so far as pushing the agenda i want to make sure that diversity inclusion and equity um are really part of of this whole um or funding and so i want to make sure that a lot of the folks that responded to covid uh cdu the floods uh that helped with you know that helped respond in communities with you know medicrews uh farm work assistants snap assistants are really part of this right um especially in you know communities like latino communities underserved communities immigrant communities um and making sure that children youth and elderly are also a priority in these communities and you know i want to point out you know i'm really addressing communities like watsonville beach flats live oak because they're they're really the underserved and underrepresented communities that uh if we want to address equity that's where we have to look at so i want to make sure that we do that thank you service for nanosuppers or comics thank you chair i want to take a minute um one to uh acknowledge what happened with you keisha broder and you know that's completely unacceptable for our community behaving that way and um you know we value the work and the services you provide our community so just know that you do have a support network around you um and i also want to acknowledge uh the fact that i know that randy morris you got here in 2020 and this whole process started back in 2015 and i don't know if if kimberley you were here at the time and this process was going on uh as well different position different position right so i do want to acknowledge that um we do have staff who kind of inherited something that was kind of already under course from a number of years and then we're putting a position where they had to um you know kind of pull things together and figure out how to operate operationalize this and make this work um and then i just want to take a minute to just provide some context for where i'm going to be coming from with some of the questions and comments that i have so i grew up for the community to know i grew up lower middle class on the south side of chicago and it was through many nonprofit programs that got me to where i am i was able to go through through subsidized camps from the american lung association i was able to go to summer camp which really inspired and helped my connection with nature and inspired me to go into biology and as a result of that i continued down that track and was able to get a phd here from uc sc in ecology evolutionary biology and throughout my time as well i've worked mostly in either the nonprofit or academic sectors whether it was planning community gardens in the city of chicago as an intern working in cook county jail with gardening programs uh whether it was on diversity equity inclusion groups as a grad student um but in particular since i moved back to Santa Cruz in 2015 i've spent my time running nonprofits focused on diversity equity inclusion around increasing diversity in the field of environmental conservation and also increasing diversity in tech around the use and application of drones for good so i say that because um i've spent a lot of time in the nonprofit sector i understand how challenging it is for nonprofits um and really understand also the need for us to have new programs and not just throw money at the same people over and over again without having any outcomes what was challenging for me with receiving this report and um is that when i saw that we were going to get a five-year look back what i was interpreting was that we were going to be getting some information about previous programs and what they provided to the community in terms of services and you know there was a box on here that had five years of discovery and they were in progress made you know discovered how programs made a difference in the lives of individual families implement and learn more about evidence-based practices to improve services but when i read through the materials i didn't see that being discussed and so i think what will be helpful moving forward is for us to actually understand how these programs have been funded who they've actually served and what were the outcomes because that wasn't provided and that's something for me that's really important when we're moving into the next phase of trying to you know rethink this process the other thing that came up to you was that i appreciate all the work that you know the community members have done in this process but one thing that for me was really that negatively impacted me when this came to us at the city council was the fact that we had asked we saw that there were new changes in terms of who was getting funding and how the funding was being allocated but what i was requesting at that time was to get access to the applications and to the access to scoring so i could better understand why do we come how do we get to this conclusion and that was denied to the elected officials and i know we talk a lot about trust but that's where the trust starts breaking down when if we're trying to have a transparent process we should be able to have access to why why were decisions made why do we not fund you know community bridges why do we now fund united way all we got were here the recommendations that came from the community and for me it's really critical and as somebody who really wants to make an informed decision that we as elected have access to the applications we have access to the scoring rubrics if if members of the community were the ones who did the scoring we can understand what their comments were why they scored things a certain way so we can so we as elected actually can respond when people come to us and say hey why did my organization get funded it's like well here's the justification in the absence of that i just throw out my hands and say i don't know so i think that moving forward with this process we really need to make sure that the electives have an opportunity to be involved and have our voices included in terms of what we are making recommendations on as well because you know we're elected to spend these funds and we should be able to weigh in on this process to give our input as well because it might be that we're in complete alignment it might be that we have some disagreements but i think that it's really critical that we have access to these applications that we understand how the decisions were made the one question one question i did have because i keep hearing equity brought up and operationalizing equity and i just like to know if you could explain that because personally i feel like people use equity as a buzzword but we really don't understand but you know it's not clear what that actually supposed to mean i i recognize your question was about equity you said a lot of things and i wanted first equity and then i think some of the proposed time adjustments will allow for a better conversation about applications so i come back to that second so equity again here too i don't want to get in front of the community providers and what their experience of this is because it is a cheap word it's easy talk but i want to recognize as staff the process we went through i heard maria lana say it was prickly it was painful we talked a lot in the stakeholder meetings what would equity look like in this rfp and the voice that i heard as uh one of the facilitators of this conversation is will you allow us as community-based organizations to tell you in our application what equity is let us identify as community providers who are in the community working with the community where we see inequity we want to identify where the inequities are we want to have our proposal identify that inequity and name what we will do to address that inequity and if funded that will build the scope of work for how we are making progress one of the things you and i talked about in our prep meetings i think is worth lifting up is we don't have the first full year report of the current round of contracts that will be submitted in the fall when we come to you in um december we were able to report on the first round of how did equity get operationalized how are the outcomes looking based on that was the answer to your question the community provider said please don't tell us how to don't tell us in the application this is what equity looks like you make you make your square peg enter our round hole you we let us tell you so that's how equity got manifest in the application process and now all the scope of works of the contracts are built around what the cbo's that were awarded said they would do to address an inequity so that's the comment there and i do want to say i i hope i can't speak for you or uh uh but i do want to say i hope there is some grace and recognition as you said in your introductory comments we inherited this and we also are in the middle of the depths of covid and then the omicron variant as a reminder pushed all of this forward two months so we are in a tight tight tight time frame and at that time when the recommended awards came forward june 7th with only three weeks in the middle of an appeal period the prospect of at that moment having elected officials enter in without getting trained on the rp process the scoring rubric reading all 176 applications giving all five elected without doing that whole process the prospect of just sort of upending the entire appeal process and getting in front of then what was in front of you june 28th was complicated and i think this next by moving everything up six months we can figure out and talk about how and what role elected officials or staff play there's always going to be attention there because i think as i've heard one of the reasons this move from elected officials directing the staff how to fund people was to actually have a procurement have people go through this process so i think trying to find some middle ground in there with more time i think we can try to get at a better place but i think that rush in the last minute made it really difficult for everybody so i hope that i i responded to your equity question and the comment about applications one of the things that he asked about and you kind of brought it up too was about you said that some agencies asked about how applications are scored but you kind of asked about the criteria but do we have some sort of like a rubric to a rubric that shows the criteria that we're asking a transparent rubric where we could show this is what we're looking for for the applications i do i have two comments one looking backwards and what happened to name it and own it and then two looking forward it was in the one of the recommended actions to apply just looking backward in part the rush the staff vacancies we sequenced the release of a scoring rubric after the rfp was released so it wasn't all bundled together because the time to get the thing it was just moving so fast to make sure we didn't miss the fiscal year window so there was some reasonable criticism that when the rfp was first released there wasn't as much detail about how applications would be ranked and i think that was a byproduct of just the rush and the volume of work looking forward that is one of the stakeholder feedbacks we received is please be more specific more transparent when you release the rfp next time exactly what your ranking and what the scoring rubric is that is easily operationalized with more time i think i just yeah um yeah i think um in the future application process a couple things these are just a couple comments um we might want to consider well i think we should consider you know for the scoring it should be less on how an application is written and should really focus on the services that organizations are providing and the communities that they're reaching um i've been on the rise with the rise together through the santa cruz community foundation kisha was on there for a while as well and one of the things that's come up and it's a it's an organization through the community foundation that's um nonprofit leaders of color who serve communities of color in santa cruz county one of the things that came up in that conversation is that you know small organizations can't always write the best applications they can provide the services but maybe there's language barriers educational barriers but bears them being able to actually be able to write what could be considered a quote unquote good application and so i really think that it's important that we're focusing on the services that people are providing the ability for them to carry out services so that we are being inclusive of people who might not have uh access to resources that would allow them to you know potentially write the equivalent of a very large organization's proposal um and then uh another thing that to take into consideration is also how organizations are leveraging funds that was one thing that i had heard was left out last time but if you have and it might seem you know that maybe this is a small percentage of the funding that organization is bringing in but if an organization let's say gets ten thousand dollars and they get a five-time match in federal funds that's you know sixty thousand dollars that they're now losing to their organizations and that has huge impacts on what we heard in the last round of funding was that some of those organizations who got cut that those they also lost those matching funds which had even bigger impacts on their organizations so it's more than just thinking about we're going to give this organization ten thousand dollars and that's great it's also um how much more money could they potentially lose if they don't get that funding and you know leveraging funds is something that i think is really critical for us to expand how our dollars are going because at the end of the day we can say we handed out four million dollars but you know but potentially it could have equated to six if there's potential matching funds that can expand those those dollars further um and so i'll end my comments there for now because i could get as somebody who works in you know previously worked in nonprofits i can go on and on but i do have some additional uh direction that i'd like to provide um after the motion's made okay i'll make some brief comments to make sure we get an opportunity here from the community um me supervisor Cummings had said that you had come into a process that you didn't start well i was here in 2015 supervisor McPherson here in 2015 intimately familiar with what led to this and what used to be was we would have a couple hundred people here angry about functionally everything when it came to our funding here uh because there was no process by which new and emerging needs could be addressed no process by which diversity equity or inclusion could even be considered no metrics that were required any sort of operational facts of whether or not those that need our money and help the most in the social safety network actually getting their needs addressed and a perverse incentive to ensure that those that had been receiving the funding for the longest create a political structure to ensure that nobody else be led in so after dozens and dozens of community meetings a hundred percent of which were contentious i mean unequivocally there wasn't this wasn't a love fest you know of changing to this situation the board after multiple divided votes right i mean it wasn't even unanimity on the board said and by the way we recognize that we're talking about one percent of the safety net even though this is creating like 99 percent of the consternation i mean so there's there's an absurdity even to some element some of this discussion in a way but the board decided that we needed to have a process i mean you had said that there was no way to explain how people were funded now there was no way to explain how people were being funded before other than to say well they've been funded for the last 40 years and that's it and so we started an iterative process that created carve outs and small organization set-asides and and the pushback was enormous from those that had systemically benefited and those that wanted to compete were afraid to even come to the board meeting to express that they had been shut out of the system for 40 years for fear of retaliation on referrals from other community-based organizations from being ostracized from local organizations i mean do you want to talk about a culture that needed reform the county funding structure on the community-based organizations from 1979 1980 to 2015 needed the most reform of any structure i'd say so i i just take a little bit of exception with some of the comments that have been made in the community over what the intentions were of this because the intentions at its base are how do you provide services for people with no voice in a system how do you ensure as needs evolve and the community becomes more diverse and inequity grows even larger that we're addressing that and there isn't a perfect system there's just a system that moves toward perfection and what we're trying to do and i have real concerns about doing anything that would break down the system that we've been building up right now because the one thing i do know is moving back to a system of 40 years ago will only disadvantage those that need it the most and if we want to make improvements to the current system absent what we can all agree is actually needed is a large augmentation of available resources right then i think we just need to realize that every modification we make creates an externality within that system whatever it may be if elected officials want to have more say in the process that's great it's probably mutually exclusive from an independent review and data-driven system it just is and if that's the way that the board wants to go that's the board's prerogative we had it for 40 years this is the challenge there is no perfect solution in this which is why i had said in june that because of this sense when things came back that the entire board fell that well maybe we didn't intend on things like where money could be leveraged for example which was discussed that maybe we should have 80% of it done through a competitive process and a knowledge that's a a million or so set aside 20% set aside for this flexibility within that time period because one either i trust people that have been in this space for 30 or 40 years professionally or i don't right if i'm going to trust these organizations with tens of millions of dollars in contracts to serve those that need it the most i'm going to trust Mr. Morris's team and Ms. Morales's team and their entire commitment to public health and the safety net but i'm not going to trust any of them to judge something that comes to them in application because i know best as an elected official i think we got a problem with that so i just want to i just want to caution the board yeah we were elected by the people sometimes we also have to recognize that not everybody participated in that process and there's a system that's flawed that elects us to but i also want to respect those that have a lot of insight into this process and ensure that their voices are lifted up because they're experts in a process i may not be an expert in and what i don't want is because we got hundreds of emails after that and calls and visits to our office hours when people saw they weren't going to be funded that we cave to a political pressure and argue that's that's actually representing the people no that's representing a loud voice in the room the process if it's flawed can be reformed the process shouldn't be thrown out and i think that this is where we are and i mean i'm supportive of it as is as what the recommendations are i'm going to be very cautious to see what the other additional recommended actions are or any modifications because i think it starts to erode the process like water in a crack and over time it's going to split it and we're going to end up back to where we are so anyway i wanted to give the history for those that necessarily weren't here um in the community to know that this is why we went through the challenge we went through and this was a very challenging situation i mean a really challenging situation to even get to where we are and yeah we're recognizing it's not perfect but the last thing that i want to do is to go back to where it was 40 years ago uh where we couldn't explain where a single dollar was going while i was going and what i was doing and we have a lot of the issues that we're dealing with today are because of the lack of investment in housing equity and affordability and a lot of other things over the last four years that all of us share a shared responsibility of including community-based organizations so i think that that is what my concern is but i want to open up to the community now for those that haven't had an opportunity to speak if there's anybody here in chambers i'd like to address this on the side and please step forward hi uh my name is sony nunez i'm the marketing communications manager for community bridges i'm a resident of district four i live in watsonville um i'm not here to necessarily talk about the process of the previous core funding um or the past either i just want to highlight one of the findings of the report as i read through it they really resonated with me last night and that's finding number five i have have it up here the title of that is we need to have a discussion about values that is equity and data centered and then i also want to highlight one of the quotes from an elected official here an unnamed elected official at the bottom of this finding and it is it is important to recognize that certain services do not fit within a competitive structure in rfp it does not make sense to have some safety net services be included in the competitive process we need to identify which social services we want to be competitive versus non-competitive so i highlight this to underscore a lot of what has been talked about today about um upcoming needs and what is needed going forward and um and to highlight our disaster services or our disaster relief services that we've implemented since the january floods in over the last four months uh and that includes work not only in south county in watsonville but also work that we've been doing in the san lorenzo valley as well too for communities that have been devastated there um making these sorts of cuts to safety net programs like our family resource centers hurts not only those communities but the communities that those be uh that um that get those services from those communities and um if it was not for foundational funding um from uh foundations across the central coast we would have had to had very tough conversations within community bridges about how and when we could respond to the ongoing disasters right now in both parro and the san lorenzo valley and so i think supervisor koenig said it very well that we need to look at um how we can adjust our services in that way um and look at the most pressing needs going forward thank you thank you miss shunius thank you also for your service on the health district good morning or good afternoon i apologize well i'm shuniel and everyone my name is julio andrade and i've served as a the co-director for cradle to career uh it's an honor and appreciate to be here with you guys today um the rfv uh process has helped cdc reinforce equity in data central components of our work uh live walks c2c where pretty much our initiative started a couple years ago uh was a flying uh plane right we were building it while we were flying so one of the things that the core investment has helped us proceed as making this initiative a more in um bringing more people and more parent voices to the table right making sure that the parents throughout the whole county makes have a place for them to raise their boys raise their concerns and advocate for their families right our our mission would see to see us that we're a family advocacy and service connector uh which we pretty much align and hear the parents voices to understand determine what what type of needs they have right uh and a great example of that it's going back to cove right when hobbit hit a lot of parents were seeking support when it comes to financial support uh we work with other other community partners to bring those resources to the community by providing gift cards to help them pay for bills help them pay for food other table um so in the past couple of months uh this opportunity has reached other parts of our county right connecting us from solar rental valley all the way to um watsonville uh we're working closely with other partners who have not been in our table before a great examples pv usd was also being part of this uh great expansion in our family learning circle where we allow opportunities for other parents from other counties to also elevate their boys uh advocate for their families and connect them through resources right uh me as a as a new immersion leader i've been in this role for eight months uh so it's it's a pleasure to be here and i just want to share our gratitude for you guys who look our way but in my personal i want to say a special thank you to kisha who's taking us with them under their wings to make sure that we can connect to other families in our county thank you thank you for your work good afternoon welcome good afternoon my name is cristal melina heronimo and i am one of the new um community organizers for creative career of santa christ county um and just you know the core um the core funding has enabled cdc to expand its innovation of model of systems to change recon reconfigured how decisions are made um by putting community voices at the center the opportunity to do things differently in a change to uplift and uplift equity and move upstream to create lasting positive change to support health and well being of our community parent input must be included in how systems are set up in order to serve the dreams and and needs through the support of court cdc will bring greater diversity of voices into the schools the creation of local programs and even policy part priorities in a recent advocacy workshop we hosted we asked parents what their vision of resealing community was parents shared the values of love peace unity gratitude connection and empathy where families feel connected their community their schools the resources and supports and to one another this is what thriving families look like and this is our vision of what we hope to achieve achieve through this grant we are excited to continue to pave new pathways uplift equity engage the community and build build the county-wide connections with the support of the core thank you for the game changing of opportunities unit and transformations or transform our community through the core investment thank you thank you you're welcome back miss ready thank you excuse me good afternoon thank you very much david brody executive director first five sand cruise county um i don't know about all of you but this has been a pretty emotional meeting for me and that's just a long continuation of emotional meetings related to core in particular um so in that context i want to thank the staff i want to thank the core team i want to thank the applicants um for everything they've done for everything they've endured and for their commitment to do what supervisor friend expressed is continue to seek out that more perfect system in the absence of perfection um it really is meaningful that we recognize the intention and the commitment of everyone in our community to the well-being of our community to equity in our community and to the success of all our kids and families and i believe core plays an important role in that i was here too when this process started um beyond all the things that were mentioned that core was doing and did to enhance against what happened before um the rationalization of the process essentially this county also took a bold leap to say not just us but with our other partners with our other jurisdictions with our other organizations with first five and other parties to create a collective impact framework so that we're working together in like purpose to achieve the results that we want to achieve collectively and i commend the board and the staff for doing that and i really really encourage you to stay the course to achieve that vision i also endorse the changes that have been suggested that are in the report including some community prioritization um but most of all i just wanted to get up here and say we need to create an environment of love and support for everyone in this room to support the children and families in our community thank you thank you mr brody thank you for your work definitely welcome back good afternoon hosueba has um chief programs officer second harvest food bank um thank you so much again for all of the stuff that you all do i'm going to bring up two points so the work that's been brought up uh that was brought up earlier by one of the board members of what we've done to um for the folks that have been in the floods so in the past couple months we've provided almost two well almost eight thousand warm meals for those that were that were in the shelters and also in hotels we've also provided about 20 000 meals for those folks that were just placed and we're living either with families in the san lorenzo river and the san lorenzo valley and or in watsonville all of that stuff was on top of what we were supposed to be doing for the scope of work for core that's something that's in our dna to be able to support our community and we still haven't put away our vision of what the scope of work was for core what we're looking at is the nutrition education and we're seeing that with the past two presentations that were given because focusing on youth and focusing that they are the future leaders we've identified that there's some areas within your districts that children are obese or that could be prone to diabetes and so with us focusing on the youth and focusing that nutrition education and the health that they're doing in schools and the food that they eat at home it could be beneficial for them to revert diabetes so that's one of the things that we've been able to do with the core and we continue to do that um throughout but we've been having to shift gears because of all the floods that have happened but we're very appreciative for the work that's been done and for all of our cbos because we depend on 126 cbos to also help and partner up to give food out to those families we know that as one organization we can't do it alone and just as we had fellow colleagues present on the work that they've done that's something that we are very strong and we are very thankful that we continue to be unified one of the things that i do ask that we encourage to is look at diversity equity inclusion and we add the piece of belonging because i think that's a piece that we're also missing and follow this work thanks thank you thank you for your work is there anybody else in chambers before we open it up online welcome back good afternoon yeah thank you i took three pages of notes um let's go back to the beginning kisha i'm really sorry you've had that experience uh i took a lot of notes i'll do some further research to before i make some pointy and comments but it's fascinating and nice that there are so many community members here speaking to you supervisors as if you're anything more than puppets because it's my understanding that since um before 1917 the city and county council members are controlled by their um city and county managers so i'm just wondering why carlos palacios isn't up there on a throne because he's directing all you folks um besides that i learned a lot from this stuff and i'm really happy to hear all of the good things that people are describing that are happening happening in sanikers although i have some questions about what people determine is good so thank you thank you madame quirk well is there anybody else in chambers madame quirk anybody online yes chair we do have speakers online maria your microphone is now available ria your microphone should now be available to make comment as a reminder it's star six to mute or unmute yourself uh good afternoon can you hear me good afternoon can you hear me sorry about that um so good afternoon word of supervisors my name is maria gadenas i'm the executive director of ventures 501c3 nonprofit that partners with working-class families in the center coast to build compassionate and equitable local economies that contribute to our community's well-being together we're working towards a shared and prosperous economic future where zip code race gender or immigration status do not dictate income or wealth we're thankful for the board's commitment to a community-important process centered on equity change especially when funding and need are involved is not without learning opportunities and challenges i have personally been involved in core as a student committee member from inception and will note that steadfast commitment to listen adjust and respond to community input has never happened today i want to echo the report's finding of continued transparency and commitment to the process this includes the importance of finding balance between emergent and immediate need and the space for innovation and intergenerational change that will guide us to the future we want again we commend the county and the board for pursuing and executing a process centered on data and equity similarly we're grateful to have been funded to support semiguitas or college savings account program now serving almost 6000 families and alas or financial stability program every day we hear from parents and working adults whose life and hopes have shifted but most importantly within which we are connecting across sectors education health financial stability during the recent storm emergencies we have heard from families about how through our work they felt more mentally and financially secure a much more resilient community and it all thanks to the funding from you these outcomes speak to more than individual family changes it is changed to transform our community as a whole i thank you again for your time and support and commitment to the process thank you colon user one your microphone is now available gary and thank you for the valuable community work many organizations are doing when i was a teaching i had a bumper sticker on my car and i taught elementary school for 30 years and it said it will be a great day when the schools have all the money they need and the air force has to have a big sale to buy a bomber over or approximately half of our tax dollars goes to the military budget like to build war manufacturers while keymarking rapion in the ukraine etc i did hear an excellent speech recently by robert f kennedy jr addressing this disparity and how people hear are in poverty you can hear that at children's health events dot org and we can't have equity with a corporate dominated system where wealth goes to the corporations and the sad conditions of the poor you illuminated uh get exasperated in kennedy's book the real anthony fouchy economic destruction and shifting wealth upward which is really what we're talking about here i'll read it till i get cut off during the covid pandemic dr fouchy served as ringmaster in the engineered demolition of america's economy his lockdown predictably shattered the nation's once booming economic engine putting 58 million americans out of work and permanently bankrupting small businesses eight your microphones now available good afternoon supervisors and staff my name is kate hannon camp operations manager for the community action board immigration project i'm a resident of district one the immigration project and cabs thriving thriving immigrants initiative received core funding last year to meet three key objectives first to launch a legal services office in the city of santa cruz second to expand free state subsidized DACA and citizenship services countywide and third to organize monthly educational workshops to promote the benefits of us citizenship with core support we now offer our full range of free professional immigration legal services at our city of santa cruz office serving people who previously had to miss a day of work to travel to watsonville for help or spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars to hire a private attorney also by supporting our DACA and naturalization services countywide core has allowed cab to leverage 270 000 and counting of state filing fee assistance this is money that applicants would normally have to find in their household budgets to be able to pay for us citizenship and immigration services so it's five to seven hundred dollars per application instead these dollars are staying in our community to pay for rent groceries education and other essentials cab thanks the county board of supervisors and the santa cruz city council for advancing equity for immigrant families in santa cruz county thank you norah your microphone is now available hi there can you hear me yes so my name is norah caruso i have been the co-executive director or program director at the toddler center since 2006 and i want to start with a question i guess i'm wondering sort of speaking to the issue that the community the core funding has been sort of farmed out to uh you know the committee that are have the expertise around these issues i'm wondering if the county supervisors know that childcare as a sector was cut 90 percent we also add that at the toddler center had our funding cut 90 percent so this to us looks like a clear priority that this board has made in terms of the importance of childcare in our community and i just want to make sure that this is something you're all comfortable with and that this is something you're happy to sign off on so hopefully somebody can contact me email me and let me know about that and then i just want to speak a little bit about the past process which yes was imperfect but i reject the notion that there was some automatic process in which we were able to get funding and by the way in the 17 years that i had been at the toddler center we were cut every single year but there was a rigorous process we had stringent guidelines a stringent application process which involved quarterly reports site visits from elected officials and reapplying every single year i also want to you to know that i reject the notion that we as nonprofits should be pitted against each other in some hunger games fashion as if there's not enough money to go around when you look really clearly at the percentage of the budget that has been allocated for core funding i really think that there should be could be and what should be a bigger slice of the pie rather than asking us all to scramble for crumbs of this tiny little slice thank you so much thank you raman your microphone is now available good afternoon board supervisors we just urge the board to continue to be curious creative and engaging and not only the corporate process but the questions this process is raised as we are all aware of the transitions from long-term safety programs and services that depended on stable committed partnership from the county to focus on startup experimental and merging needs we must also continue to do all the work that's needed to address the design funding gaps that were created in the process and that we need to focus on outcomes impacts strategy investments and process and program to address the greatest needs by doing so you need to include things like cost per interaction cost of change cost of measurable impacts for reported change which is all not part of your report your request by supervising fearson last time to the human services department is outlined in attachment d which was to create opportunities to create new funding opportunities and grants with partnering organizations that were not successful in the application process human services department has done zero to create new funding opportunities the over 206 thousand dollars that is quoted is all coming from contracting support from the public health department that is not the human services department we should also be consciously optimistic with the findings as the report self indicates 47 percent we're all new organizations well it's at the same time taking credit for the expansion of evidence-based practices among recipients a simple question to ask imponder is were the results of a part of the fact that the new applicants were not as prepared as the old applicants you need to understand the baseline before you start making assertions about creating and rewarding the process for creating more or greater equity as a result I think that we all understand that this is the fact that something is new is not a medical means to quantify equity by itself simply by stating that fact and not by its own coalition does it make it true we must be diligent about our data we must understand who our services service change and then we also must be reporting out on who did receive the wonderful services moving forward in the discussion of what core is and what is not we must not lose sight of the continued needs and services for our community and thank you all for your public service mr. casino clay your mic front is now available play camp executive director of the seniors council and I want to point out I mean equity is such an important issue but I just want to point out that most of our community programs were formed because of a lack of equity in the community so it's at the heart of what we all do and believe in I've been at this I'm in my fourth decade of it and my historical experience was very different than the one supervisor friend described so I don't want to get into a debate about that but I think it's important to share that and I really mentioned it because I've been part of I don't know for community program reform processes and we're constantly striving to make the system work better so I embrace that a couple things that I think we need to look at though is we need to focus on results and we're spending all our time talking about process and I think the process is important but if the process doesn't yield positive results that we may need to revisit the process itself and one of the things that I've been asking for five years is that we see those unintended consequences measured we really need a comparison of who was funded previously who isn't funded now and that may be a good thing it may be a bad thing but it could avoid debates like we're starting to have over whether senior programs gain money or lost money I know of $200,000 in cuts to senior programs so we may just be defining what a senior program is differently and along those lines I'd be remiss if I don't leave or if I leave these comments without stating that ageism and ableism are huge issues of equity and as much as I love Keisha and hate what happened to her when I hear about cradle to the grave it just jumps out at me that's actually what we need to achieve not cradle to career cradle to career leaves out older adults so it's frustrating that we have an equity project that excludes old adults in the equity issue so hopefully we can move forward I love to wrap up really quickly I love the recommendations and the action that staff is taking in order to partner with the community and the board of supervisors better and encourage more of that to happen going forward thank you mr cap we have no further speakers here all right we'll bring it back to the board Supervisor McPherson yeah thank you I'm going to summarize we can talk about this for hours I guess but I would just move that we accept the recommended actions and point out that Donna before December 12th one of them the fourth one is to get a progress report and an update on the community engagement we're in a much better place right now time-wise especially to address these issues and to continue the core program one way or the other so in general I just want to say I want to move the recommended actions and I appreciate the work of the staff and the input from everybody in the community a second and I'd like to also propose a couple potential friendly amendments and so in addition to that with number four with that report and we've heard this conversation throughout the day of wanting to get data and understand how these programs are performing so explicitly should the reports should include information about what newer existing services each program provided with the funds who they served and what needs were met and evaluation of the individual programs effectiveness and meeting their program goals and objectives and those are the additions to number four number five in addition to community outreach to gain input on improving sir improving the process meet with interested supervisors to collect and incorporate feedback on improvements for the next core RFP process and then six would be provide the board with expenditures for annual core consultant services in 2015 to the present I've been getting people reaching out to me asking me how much we've spent on the consultants I think we've asked this department we haven't gotten a clear answer back and I think it would be good for us to be able to have that information personally so if that's amenable and acceptable yeah I think we can get some of those things answered without changing my motion I would rather just be straightforward go with it I think some of those things are going to be included in your updated report in fact may ask a clarification um I want to confirm supervisor Cummings on the one about what to report back um is it agreeable to what your the friendly amendment that we do not change the scope of work or expectations of the current contract because we will report on everything that's already set up in the scope of work but if like I just want to make sure you're understanding and okay that you're not asking us to go change what the CBOs are reporting on you just want a clear report on what is already in the scope of works of the contracts what I'm interested in is understanding because what I thought I read was an annual summary of the investments and what I'm asking is that we get information about what the programs are providing and how effective they are who they're serving because if we're talking about equity um you know are they serving what percentage of Latinos are they serving what percentage of women are they serving what percentage of low-income families are they serving like if that's built into the RF I mean I'm not trying to change the scope of work I'm just really trying to understand what needs are being met this is the data that we're supposed to be working off of so that it will be in the December report we will have the annual report and we only had a mid-year report to build this current update the annual report is more comprehensive and we'll respond to that and it will be included in the December update and then also just to be clear and transparent with the public we can't violate Brown Act by having policy discussions about anything privately with board members but any board member that wants to talk to us about this process before we're in front of the board we are happy to have conversations and then we just want to report that transparently when we come back into so I think that all fits in with normal process if I'm hearing your friendly amendments and then with regards to the with regards to the consultant oh yeah and we yeah the the consultant contracts are public we can do a we can do and we talked to you about this the EOC activations delayed our first request then we got a series of extra questions from you and then we met with you and we responded to them and we are still have a deliverable to your office the consultant contracts like every contract we have our publicly procured publicly named and we can give a succession to your office or any office what wants to see that or any other contract we have their public documents right so we have a motion and a second that is still just the recommended actions if we got a roll call please yes and just to clarify there will be no additional direction correct correct okay well he didn't accept it he didn't say something else so right boosted Rod's mother additional no I oh I'm just I just want to keep the motion as she was just clarifying that the December 12th will have this right he wanted to read that off on the item but but there's no additional direction that was accepted correct thank you chair all right supervisor conic hi Cummings hi Hernandez hi McPherson hi and Fred hi that item passes unanimously we have a closed session is there anything reportable coming out of closed session nope all right then that'll conclude this meeting our next meeting is may night thank you all for being here