Advisory Board: Los Medanos Health Advisory Committee
Subject: Staff report regarding 2023-2025 grant distributions.
Presenter: Ernesto De La Torre
Contact: Ernesto.DeLaTorre@cchealth.org
Information:
Between the two Board Orders there were 25 grants approved by the BOS, the final approval was in March. There was a significant delay and contract creation did not start until late April when additional health department staff were assigned.
* 17 contracts fully completed with final letter sent to vendors and they have begun submitting invoices for reimbursement.
* 5 contracts entered and are moving through the contracting and grants system.
* 3 agencies still pending. More information is needed from the vendors and have not yet been entered into the C&G system.
I take full responsibility for the delays in communicating with grantees in April. Timing for contract development was significantly underestimated. With additional staff to support it is still taking 90 days for contract development. For example, basic legal review can take 30 days. If there are questions or changes requested by legal it can add additional time to review with the vendor and get final review from county counsel.
There were additional delays as we finalized the system to request funding prior to expenditures. This was a completely new process for our system and there was pushback to the idea of providing 50% of funding up front. The result is that we received final approval to create contracts that allow for advance payment of one month or 1/12th of the annual budget. This will allow smaller agencies to begin work without needing to have initial funding. About 1/3 of the contracts so far have used this option.
To increase efficiency of the contracting process we created a dedicated group email for correspondence related to the grant program (losmedanosgrants@cchealth.org) that allows for multiple staff to view and respond to emails rather than emails getting clogged with a single person...
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