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MINUTES ORANGE COUNTY BOARD OF SOCIAL SERVICES March 16,2026 4. Outside Agency Applications DSS is reviewing 13 outside agency applications. Six of them are food security that are not technically with DSS, but we are able to provide feedback and ask questions. Lindsey Shewmaker provided a handout to the board that summarizes their approved funding for this year and next year's request along with a brief description of the proposed services. Starting with number 7, those are DSS specific organizations and those meetings are scheduled for next week. Volunteers for Youth and Exchange Club have questions about number of participants. Skjaja is new and seems really good, but looks like a duplication of youth enhancement program that we operate. Early Years has renamed themselves from Child Care Services Association and has a significant amount of overhead costs which is why we applied for the Smart Start funds. One of the concerns is that they say they have over 200 kids on their waiting list; we don't have a waiting list and are wondering where these kids are because we have funds and could be serving them. OWASA has an interesting funding request. They are trying to set up a system to offset costs on an ongoing basis for applicants at/below 200% federal poverty level and looking at this as a pilot program. This was brought to the Board of County Commissioners a year ago and they were inclined to not support this because it seemed very selective/small subset of the county residents. Not sure how this will be treated as they do not meet the 501 c3 criteria. DSS likes the concept but is also concerned about the equity as it serves a small subset of the concept. Piedmont Electric Helping Hand Foundation is also a duplication of services of our utility assistance program. We will share the final scorecards but it won't be until April, and will also provide the managers recommendations. 5. Director's Report DSS still has 22 vacancies as of last Tuesday but are making good progress. We have our budget meeting with the County Manager tomorrow and should have a better sense of what that will look like and hopefully have updates next month. We have asked them if we need to make bigger cuts to please let us know and have input in what to cut because there are a lot of nuisances to our budget and revenues. We have had serious issues with staffing in Medicaid units and a lot of it started when the hiring freeze was put in place in December. This freeze has led to a snowball effect of resignations due to increased workloads. March is employee appreciation month and one of things we do as an agency is to plan out weekly things for staff. This is funded by supervisors, managers and Friends of DSS. We do a little gift giveaway each week (ink pens, bag of chips, self-care items, and keyboard duster/screen cleaner) with a little thank you card. Our theme this year is March Madness, and we try to tie that in with everything we do. Everyone received a door sign and last Friday there was a concession theme lunch that included food and games from 12-2. We continue to work with Allies40utcomes on leadership development with some one-on-one coaching and have had some really positive feedback. Last month was Black History Month and one of things we hosted was a talk about historical trauma by Paul Slack of Office of Civil Rights and Civic Life. We are going to invite Paul back to speak at an all-staff meeting. We had a follow-up meeting with Carol Conway, who spoke with the board a couple months ago about IDD resources. Crystal is working on finding a good training resource for our staff on working with individuals with intellectual disabilities. 3