Consultant: Lucerne County Council Shows Flexibility in Awarding Awards

The Lucerne County Council has the flexibility to change how it wants to allocate $60 million in the federal American Third Party Rescue Plan, a county consultant said earlier this week.

The Board originally planned to fully fund those with the highest scores and stop payments once the total reached the $60 million threshold set by the board, resulting in an initial list of 75 eligible recipients.

Council members are now considering lower awards so that more qualified candidates can get funding.

Robin Booth of Columbia, Maryland, Booth Management Consulting, told the board during a lengthy discussion Tuesday night that even at the federal level, grant applicants often get less than they ask for.

“I have to say this because I think some applicants thought they were going to get 100%,” Bout said. “I looked through thousands of federal awards. They never give them what they asked for.”

If the council decides to cut grants, the district will ask potential recipients to submit a revised project budget that includes a lower appropriation and project completion timeline, Booth said.

Booth told board members they have the option to change their process.

“You have the authority to make different decisions,” Booth said.

Initially, there was concern that the county could face federal compliance issues if it deviated from the original plan.

The work done so far has not been a waste of time, Booth said, because every document submitted by applicants is needed for the full files of the American Rescue project.

Council members will hold a special meeting at 5:00 pm on March 7 to discuss how they wish to proceed with the awards.

One option is council member Matthew Mitchell’s proposal to cap appropriations by category, allowing all 121 eligible projects to receive funding instead of about 75. Mitchell said the plan would fully fund 84% of projects and require others to indicate what work they can do. complete with reduced allotment.

Council Vice Chairman John Lombardo said Thursday that another possibility is to reach out to all applicants and ask for the bare minimum they will need to complete a meaningful part of their project.

Lombardo said voluntary general cuts, especially for large requests, could allow the district to provide funding to more or even all eligible applicants without imposing restrictions.

He had heard from several applicants that they could accept less but asked for the maximum.

At least one more funding proposal is expected before Tuesday’s meeting, council members said.

If a majority of the board wants to stick with the original full funding plan, the list of top scoring recipients will change based on the board’s recent evaluation of five projects that were inadvertently excluded from the advisory portal used for the board’s assessment.

According to several board members, all five projects received higher scores, which would have led to the exclusion of other projects with lower scores from the original list.

Collectively, approximately $4.3 million in other requests must be removed from the top 75 list in order to fully fund the five projects. It is not yet clear which projects will be scaled back in this scenario. The council published the names of all eligible candidates and the amounts they requested, but not their individual GPAs.

In addition to the missed five, another issue was raised during the meeting on Tuesday.

Chet Mozlum, chief executive of The Lands at Hillside Farms, a nonprofit educational dairy farm in Back Mountain, asked why his organization’s application appeared on the council’s list of eligible projects.

“I think there may be integrity issues or something missing from the data,” Mozlum told the board, adding that he believes the nonprofit’s application meets all of American Rescue’s eligibility requirements.

“There is something wrong with this. It makes no sense to look at the original rules,” he said.

Council members said they are investigating why the consultant found the nonprofit’s $32,450 request unacceptable.

In yet another edition, Councilman Kevin Leskevage noted that West Pittston’s bid for funding to help add flood protection to the Susquehanna River dam for the area scored high enough to make the Top 75 list, but it was dropped due to a shortage. available funding. in the bank for $60 million to fully fund the $11 million request.

Lescavage said a partial award should have been considered, but the board was unaware that the top-scoring candidate would “just be thrown out” if there were not enough funds.

“That’s a big drawback,” Lescavage said.

Board members Tim McGinley and Brian Thornton stressed that the initial list of 75 top-rated projects should not be considered an awards list because there will be no list of awards until the board reaches the organization-specific funding stage.

Diane Kauman told the board that her project, among the original 75, was dependent on receiving all of the $203,551.62 requested.

Her small business, Second Family Memory Care LLC, will use the funding to open a 20-bed dementia “village” in downtown Wilkes-Barre.

“I really want you to think about this with all your heart and head,” Cowman told the council.

Wilkes-Barre Attorney Al Flora, who helped a local non-profit organization that did not make the Top 75 list, said he watched the council’s working meeting remotely on Tuesday and believes Mitchell’s proposal seems like the best way to proceed unless the council starts from scratch. .

In reading federal regulations, Flora said the board has a lot of leeway when making awards, but must use a process that is credible, transparent, and minimizes bias.

The subsequent evaluation of the five missed applications and complaints from some board members that they were having trouble accessing the evaluation portal for some pools of applicants led him to question the fairness of the entire evaluation process. Even if average scores are used, he argues that the score is inherently skewed unless the same board members scored every application in every pool.

“In general, I think they have a mess on their hands and they don’t know what to do,” Flora said.

Contact Jennifer Learn-Andes at 570-991-6388 or tweet @TLJenLearnAndes.