The Budget & Grants Committee oversees the annual operating budget for the Community Police Commission. The chair, Dr. John Adams, Commissioner, Alana Garrett-Ferguson, and Commissioner Piet van Lier are present, so they have a quorum.

They begin the agenda with a report on where the commission is with grants--right now they are all in phases of contract execution. This is all being done through e-mail, which makes it logistically challenging.

Cleveland Clergy, Cleveland Rape Crisis, and NEOCH all have signed contracts. For grantees with hardship, they have to submit another dispersal request--most grantees who applied have financial hardship.

Commissioner Garrett-Ferguson also asks about the length of contracts, noting that at a previous meeting, a community member asked that they be shortened, The speaker discussing contracts says they are already quite streamlined.

If a grantee feels strongly about removing a clause, they must do it themselves. The CPC is part of the city--they are not able to act as a legal representative for other community organizations. Martin, their new legal representation for next year will try to further streamline.

The city believes the contracting language is important and uses the language of protecting taxpayer dollars as justification. The chair shares similar concerns to the Commissioner around grantees being able to access their funds.

Here is the agenda with more information on today's meeting!

The grant manager states that they are still new to giving grants and have a lot to learn. Ideally, they have a grants manager and better tracking software in the future.

Another update is around a letter they wrote to Councilman Griffin, asking for $150,000 from the city budget to fund the grant administrator position and tracking software. They have confirmation that it was received by Councilman Polensek, but have not heard from Griffin.

Moving onto CPC Grants Survey Update--a survey created to solicit feedback from community members and other stakeholders in the grant process. It is ready to be sent out whenever. It makes sense to send out when grantees have received their money but still remember the process.

The next agenda item is the 2024 CPC Grants Program Update. Commissioner van Lier brings up how other grants programs have hosted info sessions and that could be a valuable addition to the CPC program.

He talks about Neighborhood Connections, Cleveland Votes, or other organizations potentially helping out the CPC with grant management as they are already doing grant work like that. At this time , the commissioner doesn't have any written notes to reference.

He also shares feedback received from the Gund Foundation--they found the application lengthy and the interviews trivial. The scoring rubric they used didn't always match the question content. van Lier brings up the idea of redistributing grant distribution to other organizations

Commissioner Garrett-Ferguson says they would want to re-grant to local organizations that still have a similar social justice/policing background. The grant manager says they need to revamp their application and rubric as the goal is to have this out there by May 15th.

That is a short deadline of 75 days. The grant manager says they can continue working on other grant logistics while applications are rolling in and advocates having one person from the CPC take on those tasks.

Commissioner van Lier also says that they did already do some grant outsourcing, giving Neighborhood Connections $50,000 to redistribute. The grants manager says that even with an outsourcing plan, the whole committee has to vote on it and it might not pass.

They need to set up an official program for the year so they are not struggling like last year. Commissioner Garrett-Ferguson says they have a deadline to finalize certain materials by April 30th...in 45 days, and agrees with the Gund Foundation's critiques on their rubric.

The chair wants to make sure grassroots organizations have a real opportunity to apply for this programming as well. The grants manager, repeating themselves, says the main step is identifying a point person to take on the next steps.

Commissioner Garrett-Ferguson will work on the rubric and the application (with the chair) and Commissioner van Lier will talk to more organizations about outsourcing grants.

The grant manager encourages everyone to fill out their conflict forms early. Both commissioners and grant applicants can self-report potential conflicts of interest. He also encourages members to reach out to their local councilmembers for more funding and oversight.

At 7:28 PM, this meeting adjourns! Have questions? Think we got something wrong? Send any inquiries on the meeting or these tweets to @cledocumenters. Or email us at cledocumenters@gmail.com