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Home My WebLink About2022-0630 CityClerk From:CityClerk Sent:Monday, August 15, 2022 5:38 PM To:Bolinger, Bonnie; Pennington, Blake; Brown, Chris; Bunch, Sarah; CityClerk; Curth, Jonathan; Harvey, Sonia; Hertzberg, Holly; Batker, Jodi; Jones, D'Andre; Kelley, Courtney; Kinion, Mark; Johnson, Kimberly; Rogers, Kristin; Williams, Kit; Jordan, Lioneld; Mathis, Jeana; Paxton, Kara; Mulford, Patti; Rea, Christine; Scroggin, Sloan; Norton, Susan; Thurber, Lisa; Turk, Teresa; Wiederkehr, Mike Cc:kyle.smith@kyle4fay.org Subject:FW: C2 Good Faith & Minimum Compliance Concerns: 2022-0630 Attachments:Aug 2 City Council Remarks - A5.pdf Hello, This comment will be archived on the City of Fayetteville's website under the Agenda Public Comments for the City Council meeting date that your comment corresponds with. This comment will not be displayed in the agenda item packet. Please see the link below for your convenience. http://documents.fayetteville-ar.gov/WebLink/Browse.aspx?id=9096659&dbid=0&repo=COF As a courtesy future reference, if you have a comment about a City Council agenda item, you may email your comment directly to the City Council and Mayor at: agendaitemcomment@fayetteville- ar.gov Thank you. Office of the City Clerk Treasurer 113 W. Mountain Street, Suite 308 Fayetteville, AR 72701 479.575.8323 cityclerk@fayetteville-ar.gov Website | Facebook | Twitter | YouTube From: Kyle Smith <kyle.smith@kyle4fay.org> Sent: Sunday, August 14, 2022 9:29 AM To: Mayor <Mayor@fayetteville-ar.gov>; Norton, Susan <snorton@fayetteville-ar.gov>; kit.williams@fayetteville-ar.gov; CityClerk <cityclerk@fayetteville-ar.gov>; Gutierrez, Sonia <sonia@voteforsoniag.com>; Jones, D'Andre <dandre.jones@fayetteville-ar.gov>; Kinion, Mark <mark.kinion@fayetteville-ar.gov>; Wiederkehr, Mike <mike.wiederkehr@fayetteville-ar.gov>; Scroggin, Sloan <sloan.scroggin@fayetteville-ar.gov>; Bunch, Sarah <sarah.bunch@fayetteville-ar.gov>; Turk, Teresa <teresa.turk@fayetteville-ar.gov>; Hertzberg, Holly <holly.hertzberg@fayetteville-ar.gov> Cc: natashacoleman121@yahoo.com; jacobtdavies@gmail.com; gladystiffany@gmail.com; vmwaide@gmail.com; emily.southwelle.english@gmail.com; Shepard, Tim <tshepard@fayetteville-ar.gov>; sgard10720@aol.com Subject: C2 Good Faith & Minimum Compliance Concerns 1 CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the City of Fayetteville. Do not click links or open attachments unless you recognize the sender and know the content is safe. Bottom Line:  Mayor Jordan & Chief of Staff: o Review the procedures of the Community Resources Department and make sure they are engaging the public to the same standards of transparency and *advance planning* that we have come to expect from groups like ATAC, Urban Forestry, and the Parks Department. Community Resources' work is too important to keep hidden. o This should be a good-faith inclusionary process and not simply a minimum compliance exercise.  City Council: o Empower your appointed advisors to do the job set before them, and rely on their advice. o Use your appropriations power to ensure accountability and transparency, and make sure we aren't missing out on opportunities to help our low- and moderate-income residents.  City Attorney Williams: o Please confirm that at least the minimum required committee review is completed in good faith on relevant items presented to the City Council. At the Aug 2 City Council Meeting, I presented you with a collection of documents including some that I did not discuss at that time. I would like to call your attention to the timeline for the grant actions on page 3 of that packet (attached) before this week's vote on the CDBG 2022 Action Plan. Lack of Communication & Information: Whether grants are guaranteed, discretionary, flexible, or highly restricted, it is impossible for the CDAP Board to fulfill their obligations if the Mayor's Staff of the Community Resources Division withholds information from the Board. Their responsibility to provide advice necessarily includes presenting them with a complete picture of the many different activities of the Community Resources Department and resources available to our community so that advice about those with discretionary uses can be informed by the full context. The ordinance establishing the Community Development and Assistance Advisory Board defines part of their purpose as: Advise the Community Resources Division and the City Council on the proposed use of Community Development Block Grant and other grant funds. You can find a timeline of CDBG/HUD related public press releases and monthly CDAP meetings in the document packet attached (p3). The CDAP agendas are also included so that you can see the pattern of silence even as much work is being done. Even though CDAP meets monthly with a standing agenda item to receive an update on relevant items from staff, none of the predictable milestones from 2022 have been presented - not ahead of time, not while active, and not even in summary. I am concerned that a promise by staff last year to provide an annual orientation will be used as a malicious compliance excuse never to mention ongoing work again as it becomes more timely throughout the year. Intentional Exclusion & Compliance Failure with Local Requirements: In particular, I would like to call your attention to the HUD-required public comment periods for the CDBG-CV Reallocation (that I have not yet seen on your agenda), and the CDBG 2022 Action Plan (before you this week). The CDBG-CV comment period ran June 13-July 12; the Action Plan comment period ran June 20 - July 19. (See timeline on p3.) The Action Plan 30-day comment period appears to have been intentionally situated to avoid the CDAP's June and July meetings which were 35 days apart. The CDBG-CV comment period began two days prior to the scheduled June meeting, but that meeting was cancelled on the recommendation of Staff for lack of substantive agenda items. It is simply unfathomable that all this activity was going on without taking advantage of the ready-made opportunities for 2 committee engagement laid out in the CIty Code. The committee's duty to provide a venue for HUD-manded comment periods is outlined in City Code §33.433: (2)Participate in the development of the Community Development Block Grant Five-Year Plans, or intermediate amendments, for adoption by the City Council; (3)Provide a venue for Housing and Urban Development-mandated public hearings and to review comments received during HUD-mandated public comment periods; Please ask the Community Resources Division Staff if they have received CDAP feedback on the entire Action Plan before you vote on Aug 16. The Staff Memo references a CDAP meeting back in September of 2021 (almost a year ago) to review the sub-grant funding portion of the plan. The information was presented at the time as though there was nothing for the committee to do (**see footnote for details), and it is not clear the CDAP Board was ever offered an update on the rest of the 72-page plan. This does not seem to be a good-faith exercise on the part of the Mayor's Staff to utilize the CDAP for their intended purpose. I hope you will go back and watch that meeting to see a dedicated group of committed community volunteers being nitpicked for using the wrong technical vocabulary and given long obfuscatory non-answers to their very insightful questions. Additionally, the CDAP agendas provided indicate no mention of the annual CDBG CAPER being shared with the Board despite that also being required in City Code. (4)Receive Consolidated Annual Performance and Evaluation Reports; Process Brings Better Substance I am offering you very critical comments associated with specific agenda items, but please understand that this is not opposition to the substance of the item before you. You should absolutely vote in favor of accepting any Federal assistance for low-income residents you can bring into our community, but the way we keep arriving at these proposals is deeply flawed and falls far short of the expectations the rest of Fayetteville government has set for transparency and public accessibility. I am asking you to please work proactively to correct the process before the next agenda item arrives with a time-pressure that prevents adequate public review. The City Council is the only group that can appropriate money and you deserve more information than you are given (on Community Resources programs) when you make those decisions. We live in a highly literate college town with many people capable of reading and understanding complicated HUD regulations. It is unacceptable for the City Council to abdicate your budgetary responsibilities by deferring all HUD- related questions to a single unelected staff person's unquestioned (and unexplained) expertise. This is how we lose huge opportunities to bureaucratic short-sightedness. You have appointed a group of highly knowledgeable advisors who are ready and eager to collaborate with you to do more good for Fayetteville residents if they are allowed. Kyle Smith kyle.smith@kyle4fay.org 479.274.8881 Facebook | Twitter | Website Footnote: **At the Sept 2021 CDAP meeting, the question of their involvement in subgrantee funding was presented in such a way that they had no feedback to offer. They were only discussing a limited subset of CDBG funds that was greater than the total request from eligible applications, so all were presumably funded in full. This presents three issues worth investigation: 1. Was the CDAP adequately involved in the development of the totality of CDBG funding categories, or was that predetermined by staff without their engagement so that their influence could be limited to this small category? 3 2. Was the CDAP involved in determining which applications were eligible and which were excluded, and for what reasons? 3. Was the process for soliciting applications sufficiently inclusive? The CDAP attempted to engage this question at their meeting but were stymied by uncooperative staff responses. 4