Memorandum
City of
City Manager’s Office
TO: |
Dave Corliss,
Interim City Manager |
FROM: |
Jonathan Douglass,
Management Analyst |
CC: |
Casey Liebst,
Budget Manager Ed Mullins, Finance
Director |
Date: |
June 5, 2006 |
RE: |
Grant activities |
During the April 6, 2006, study session regarding the 2007 Budget, the City Commission asked staff to prepare a report on how much time City departments are spending applying for and administering grants. Administration of grants includes such activities as submitting progress reports and final reports, tracking budgets and invoices, contract management, and submitting compliance paperwork.
Staff time spent on grant activities
City departments report spending approximately the following amounts of time applying for and administering grants:
Administrative Services |
260 hours per year1 |
City Manager’s Office |
50 hours per year |
Fire and Medical |
60-100 hours per year |
Human Relations |
80-160 hours per year2 |
Neighborhood Resources |
240 hours per year3 |
Parks and Recreation |
20 hours per year |
Planning |
800 hours per year |
Police |
200 hours per year |
Public Works |
1000 hours per year |
Transit System |
Majority of staff’s time4 |
Utilities |
80 hours per year |
1The Personnel Division of Administrative Services assists with the
preparation of some Equal Employment Opportunity compliance paperwork. The 260 hours reported here is the amount of
time Personnel spent on the COPS Student Resource Officer grant.
2The 80-160 annual hours represents time spent on HUD Partnership
Initiative (PI) grants. PI grants are
applied for by Human Relations and by other agencies via Human Relations. Additionally, Human Relations has a contract
agreement with HUD to operate the Fair Housing Assistance Program (FHAP). While not technically a grant, approximately
half of Human Relations staff time is spent on this federally funded
program.
3Neighborhood Resources reports that 240 hours are spent on
actual paperwork, not including monitoring, finance, program delivery,
etc. Nearly all of the activities of the
Community Development Division are related to the administration of
grants.
4The majority of the federal grant funding the Transit System receives is
formula funding through the Federal Transit Administration. Funding levels are dictated by the federal
transportation bill, SAFETEA-LU.
Administration of grant programs and compliance with federal
requirements takes up the majority of Transit’s staff time.
Results of grant activities
As shown in the Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports for 2004 and 2005, we spent, respectively, $5,019,331 and $4,893,976 of federal grant funds (most of that difference was two police grants that ended during 2005 – COPS and the Traffic Safety grant).
eCivis and other search services
Since January 1, 2005, sixteen employees from nine departments (Police, Public Works, Utilities, Human Relations, Finance, Parks & Recreation, Legal Services, Neighborhood Resources, and the City Manager’s Office) have used eCivis to view information on 670 grants. At this time most departments are aware of the grants that are available to them and are not finding new ones using eCivis. Both Neighborhood Resources and the Police Department pass along email notifications received from eCivis to other organizations in the community. The Lawrence-Douglas County Housing Authority reports that eCivis is the primary grant finder they use.
A quick survey of area cities found that there are others also using eCivis. The Unified Government has been using a different service from a company called Randall Development. They report that while the service did help them find some new grants in the first couple of years, the number of new grants has since slowed. A few cities also use the search feature and electronic distribution list available at http://www.grants.gov/.
Opportunities for Improvement
A number of departments, including Parks & Recreation and Planning, indicate that devoting more time to grant activities could possibly result in more grants being awarded to the City. The Transit System reports that more staff time could help with efforts to advocate for changes to the State transit funding formula, and also allow us to build better relationships with the City’s congressional delegation.
A multi-year capital improvement budget would assist Public Works in obtaining KDOT grants. With competitive grants, KDOT requires the City to submit five-year plans. A multi-year (at least three-year) capital improvement budget would allow the City to streamline our KDOT grant application process by demonstrating commitments to matching funds and showing that public process requirements have already been fulfilled.
Personnel Manager