Board OKs changes, ends moratorium
F Staff Writer of
ollowing a six month hiatus, the county Board Supervisors voted Tuesday to adopt the new bylaws, guidelines, and procedures for the Public Benefit Programs, hoping to have a more cohesive process.
With the approval of the new procedures, the moratorium first put in place in July expired Monday.
In June of 2016, the county approved $1.2 million in grants from the Community Benefit Program, which is implemented under the PBP, but many of those grants have not been distributed for diverse issues: ranging from lack of proper nonprofit status, project delays and failure to provide proper documentation from the entities that were awarded the grants.
Due to some of the concerns within the program, District 2 Supervisor Luis Plancarte recommended in July to implement a moratorium on the program and appoint an ad hoc committee to work with the advisory committees of both programs, the Agricultural and Community Benefit programs.
The recommendations presented to the board for both programs have some similarities.
The main changes include that the applicant must first submit a letter of intent which must include a project budget, description and proposed timeline of the project to allow the respective advisory committees to be able to identify which applications are prepared to move forward.
“If you notice some similarities of what the committees are recommending, it’s not a coincidence we worked with the staff of both programs and tried to make it as consistent as possible,” said Deputy CEO Andy Horne. “(The recommendations made came as a) reaction to difficulties we’ve had in the first round of getting these grant applications across the finish line because we’re dealing with some people, primarily nonprofits, they may not be prepared to provide a lot of documentation we are requiring them to provide.”
As part of the changes to the bylaws, the members of both advisory boards will have to disclose any potential conflicts of interest and recuse themselves from a meeting when a project they may have a vested interest on, is discussed.
Also, the applications will be more extensive and will require additional paperwork from the beginning including 501(c)(3) certificate, w-9 forms, a resolution from its governing board and will even have a tentative agreement in place prior to final approval from the supervisors.
Overall, with the new modifications, the applicants will have to complete more steps at the start of the process and the recommendations to the Board of Supervisors will be one of the final steps in the process with the intent to ensure the applicants are ready to move forward on a timely manner and have the funds be disbursed on a more expedited manner.
“The committee’s intent is to provide some front-loading of these applications in order to minimize the delays that we’ve seen in the first round, in terms of getting these applications and funding processed,” Horne said.
The Imperial Valley Press reported on Jan. 21 that only 48 percent of the funds approved in the summer of 2016 has been disbursed to date.
As a separate action to be taken, Horne recommended the Board to terminate the grants for five projects: a proposed shelter by Catholic Charities, as well as projects proposed by the Niland Chamber of Commerce, Slab City Community Group, Niland Sanitation District and Bombay Beach Community Services. Horne also recommended extending the deadline to other 12 projects, which have made progress, to July 1.
Following the cancellation of some of the projects, a total of nearly $185,000 of those funds will go back to the community benefit account, to be available for the next round of funding. Horne said with the additional funds, the county will have approximately $1.4 million available to allocate in 2018. He noted that with the current large solar projects being developed in the mount signal area, the county expects to bring in an additional $6 million in the next two years.
The Board voted unanimously in favor of all three items, including the revised bylaws for the Agricultural and Community Benefit programs and also approved the recommendation to cancel the five projects that have failed to provide the necessary documentation.