Minutes 06-03-2021 Virtual Business meeting

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30 prior fiscal year. It would allocate approximately$10.3 million in fiscal year 2021-22 and preserve a balance of approximately $18.5 million to be allocated in future years. In each of the approaches, the largest spending category is eviction diversion and housing supports. The Emergency Housing Assistance program is providing rental assistance, utility assistance as well as other payments to low income households to avoid evictions and utility disconnections. Based on experience with the Program over the past year, the Housing Department requested a total of $4 million in direct assistance to households throughout the County. However, during the past year, municipalities have contributed federal funds as well as local funds to help support their residents. If municipalities were asked to contribute on the same proportion as assistance has been paid to households over the past year, the total $4 million program would be divided among four entities. Chapel Hill residents have received 44% of assistance to date. Carrboro residents have received 25%. Residents living in unincorporated Orange County have received 23%, and residents in Hillsborough have received 8%. On that basis, the County's share (23%)would be $920,000. County staff have initiated discussions with Town staff about jointly funding this program, but the Town's may not make final funding recommendations until later in the summer. The Street Outreach, Harm Reduction, and Deflection program is experiencing the same set of circumstances. County staff have been exploring a cost share framework to support this program in both the short term and long term. However, those discussions have not been finalized. Travis Myren said the expanded lunch program is part of the current budget, and other items in the current budget are identified on the chart similarly. He said the rest of the items are not currently part of the recommended budget, and would be supplements to existing programs, or continuations of existing programs. He said programming may be funded through grants for a time, and after that there would be an expectation for the programs to either be picked up by some other funding mechanism or discontinued. He said the Food Council items are things that the Food Council is expecting to do, and the County share is represented in the chart shared with the BOCC. He said the employment and childcare category is fully funded in option 1. He said the Eviction Diversion and Housing Supports programs, is almost fully funded, and this does not include any contributions from the towns. He said the Towns previously contributed to Emergency Housing Funds with CARES money, so this assumes none or very low contribution from the Towns. Commissioner Bedford asked if money would be used to cover parent fees. Travis Myren said yes. Commissioner Bedford asked if the County has been doing that already this year. Travis Myren said yes. Commissioner Dorosin asked if staff could clarify the different approaches. He said it sounds like attachment 1 is a four year plan; attachment 2 is a more swift recovery, like a two year plan; and attachment 3 is only for the next fiscal year. He said he assumed that the same amount of money would be spent in each plan, just across different timelines; however, it seems like the different approaches actually spend less money overall. Travis Myren said the latter is accurate. He said there are two things going on: one is the department requests, and the other is the Commissioners' amendments that propose using ARPA funds. He said depending on the approach the Commissioners choose to take, some choices will have to be made to rearrange funding to include the amendments. Commissioner Dorosin further clarified that some of the plans do not spend all of the $28 million in ARPA funds.