Monday, October 7, 2024
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The Hendersonville City Council will take a second look at how to allocate $2 million in American Rescue Plan money after members failed to reach agreement last week on the appropriations.
A city staff review of 18 applications seeking a total of $8.5 million narrowed the total to $4.7 million. City Manager John Connet then recommended grants totaling $1.5 million to four nonprofit organization, leaving $500,000 to create a new crisis response position in city hall.
Nonprofit recipients Connet recommended for funding were the Connections Center, $800,000; Housing Assistance Corp., $360,000; Pisgah Legal Services, $320,000; and Safelight, $20,000.
Connet portrayed the crisis case manager as a kind of all-around trouble shooter who could respond in situations that fall through the cracks, assist the police and fire departments, and help with code enforcement and in other areas as needed.
“Through the years city council has approached me in many different ways as it relates to dealing with homelessness, dealing with substandard housing, for example,” Connet said. “Several of you have approached me about a home off Ninth Avenue that doesn't have a bathroom and is currently using a Porta John in the front yard. We looked for transformative projects that could be geared to really benefit the citizens of Hendersonville.”
At a recent city managers association convention, Connet learned about programs that are becoming more popular around the country. In those programs “social worker folks embedded in local government serve as case managers to help the police department, help the fire department,” he said. “For example the fire department from time to time will get frequent calls from the same address because that person is alone, may be disabled and may just need lifting assistance and sometimes (is) just lonely.” A case manager could intervene, contact family and connect the person with services to help, he said.
But council members began to chip away at the $500,000 Connet wanted to set aside to fund the pilot position for up to five years.
"I do support the city position but I kind of feel like we were saying we were going to contribute $2 million to the nonprofits and (now) we're saying we're going to keep $500,000,” Mayor Barbara Volk said. “I think it's a worthwhile position but 25 percent — I think it's too much. I'd like to see more of that allocated to nonprofit requests."
Volk sought to appropriate $100,000 to Interfaith Assistance Ministry, the food pantry and crisis intervention agency whose application for $393,784 ranked second to the new Connections Center’s in the city staff's scoring of grant proposals.
When other council members expressed support for requests made by the Children and Family Resource Center, True Ridge and others, council member Jennifer Hensley said she thought it was unfair for the board to reorder the funding on the fly. Council members agreed to revisit the decision next month.
A team of five department heads and administrators reviewed the applications for pandemic recovery grants and gave them scores based on impact. Here are the applicants, amount requested, proposed use of rescue plan money and score: