Rockford Sun

City of Rockford Community Action Agency Board met Jan. 24.

Here are the minutes provided by the board:

I. CALL TO ORDER

A. Roll Call

Attendee Name	Organization	Title	Status	Arrived
Karen Hoffman	City of Rockford	Alderman	Present
Gina Meeks	City of Rockford	Alderman	Present
Michael Chamberlain	City of Rockford		Present
Gina Delrose	City of Rockford		Excused
Dorothy Redd	City of Rockford		Present
Jeremiah Griffin	City of Rockford		Present
Laura Snyder	City of Rockford		Absent
Steve Booth	City of Rockford		Absent
Tiana McCall	City of Rockford		Excused
Mary Yoho	City of Rockford		Present
Markayla Herbert	City of Rockford		Present

Other Attendees:

a. Guest: Jeff Bailey

b. Staff Present: Anqunette Parham: Executive Director, Owen Carter: Deputy Director, Lisa Warren: Head Start Director, Linda Mitchell: Senior Accountant, Finance Department, Barb Chidley Neighborhood Specialist, Community Development, Angela Hammer: City Attorney, Patrick Murphy: Community Action Agency Board Clerk

c. Quorum Established 12:16 PM

II. ACTION ON MINUTES

1. Approval of Minutes

Approval of Minutes November 29, 2022

a. Guest: Jeff Bailey

b. Staff Present: Anqunette Parham: Executive Director, Owen Carter: Deputy Director, Lisa Warren: Head Start Director, Linda Mitchell: Senior Accountant, Finance Department, Barb Chidley Neighborhood Specialist, Community Development, Angela Hammer: City Attorney, Patrick Murphy: Community Action Agency Board Clerk

c. Quorum Established 12:16 PM

RESULT: APPROVED [UNANIMOUS] MOVER: Michael Chamberlain SECONDER: Karen Hoffman, Alderman AYES: Hoffman, Meeks, Chamberlain, Redd, Griffin, Yoho, Herbert ABSENT: Laura Snyder, Steve Booth EXCUSED: Gina Delrose, Tiana McCall

III. PROGRAMMATIC REPORT COMMUNITY SERVICES

1. CSBG Programmatic Report

a. CSBG

i. Our Advocates had a busy year. Below is a break down by work program of the services that Community Action provided:

1. WP-01.011 Skills Training and Opportunity for Experience: To date we have assisted 33 participants in certification/vocational course to obtain certificate or degree to acquire employment. We have assisted 16 participants with work uniforms, books and supplies, six (6) participants with CNA testing, two (2) with CNA re certification and 1 participant with physical ant TB testing.

2. WP-02.061 Educational Financial Aid Assistance (Scholarships): We have awarded four (4) $5,000 scholarships and two (2) $2,500 scholarships.

3. WP-04.011 Housing Payment Assistance (ESG Match): we have assisted 21 participants using CSBG Match for ESG funds. We have assisted seven (7) participants with temporary housing using CSBG Match for ESG and one (1) participant using CSBG Match for EHV.

4. WP-04.031 Utility Payment Assistance: We have assisted 54 families/participants with utility assistance one (1) with pumping septic tank, one (1) Internet, three (3) water, one (1) reclamation and 48 families were assisted with lights and or gas.

5. WP-04.041 Housing Payment/Rapid Re-Housing: we have served 198 families/participants. Of these families, 17 were domestic violence, nine (9) were placed in temporary housing, four (4) deposits and one (1) deposit, five (5) deposit/first month’s rent and one (1) was for rent.

Two (2) families were assisted with mortgage, 17 were placed in temporary housing, 64 were assisted with rent, 51 were assisted with deposit 46 were assisted with deposit/rent

6. WP-04.051 Housing Maintenance & Improvements (Life Safety): we have served 28 families/participants with life safety home repairs 16 to replace hot water heater, five (5) window air units, two (2) repair central air, one (1) flush water line to replace one (1) water softener, replace one (1) faucet/cartridge, one (1) gas pipe, one (1) smart thermostat and one (1) furnace control board.

7. WP-07.011 Case Management: (Youth involved in DCFS). We have served zero (0) participants in case management. Currently have been using DCFS Norman Funds and FUP vouchers.

8. WP-07.021 Eligibility Determinations: we have served 109 participants with eligibility determinations. This included, birth certificates, transportation needs (car repair, car insurance, car license plate fee, and bus tickets back to family for support and housing.

ii. Wrapping up 2022 IDHS Homeless Prevention funds, we assisted an additional 174 households either in housing placement or eviction prevention, of those 17 were domestic violence survivors. Of this 95% remained stably housed.

iii. CSBG CARES Funding ended on September 30, 2022. The chart below illustrates how funding was allocated (Jan. 1-Sept. 30, 2022).

iv. We have exhausted our BRP (Employment Barrier Reduction Program). Please see graph below.

1. Please note that 5 of the 13 that received utility assistance were homeless and past utility balance had to be paid before moving into subsidized housing.

b. Homelessness

1. The homeless numbers currently are listed below:

2. From January 1, 2022-December 31, 2022, 381 households obtained housing. Listed below are households that obtained housing by family type and type of housing:

i. Staff will be conducting the annual point in time count of the homeless on January 23rd in cooperation with the Northern IL Homeless Coalition, Rockford Fire, Rockford Police, and the Park District Police.

ii. Staff continue to work with many people in the Rapid Rehousing program ensuring that they remain stably housed.

iii. City staff helped staff an emergency warming center at Second First Church during the extreme cold around Christmas time.

iv. City staff continue to do weekly outreach to attempt to locate and connect with people on the streets and trying to get them to shelter/warming center in this cold weather.

v. We submitted a an abstract request for the Winnebago County Mental Health Board in cooperation with our Mental Health & Homelessness committee seeking funding for the creation of 5 mental health navigators to work with the unsheltered/mentally ill population and for the creation of 8 Transitional housing units for those involved with the navigators. We should hear by March 1, if we can apply for the actual grant. This is a partnership between several agencies.

c. LIHEAP 

i. LIHEAP program continues to exceed expectations in the number of applications taken this program year. We have done outreach sites every Wednesday since November with between 40 and 60 applications taken at each visit. As of January 15, we have taken 7491 applications and completely processed 6523 through to a benefit. We are approximately 124% ahead of last year’s intake. Our benefit spending rate has caused us to outpace our benefit allotment from DCEO on a frequent basis, and more funds are added to our allotment on a piecemeal basis pending grant modifications.

ii. Emergency furnace has assisted 37 households to restore heating units to working conditions in their homes.

iii. The PIPP program continues to re-certify households without adding any new households. Nicor communications have been down for over a month, and this has impacted both LIHEAP and PIPP programs. Once communications are restored, we anticipate our recertifications will have to double/triple up staff to accommodate the time frames required to get them all completed.

iv. LIKE kit information continues to be collected, and sent to the vendor through IACAA. We have sent over 698 requests since September 2022.

v. LIHWAP program continues to be highly requested, and we are seeing water shutoffs throughout the winter. We have re assigned a LIHEAP full-time staff and a temp to this program full time, and another full-time staff as well as other temp staff are assisting when possible. This is a very manual and time consuming program for each application to get through to completion. We have processed 1030 water/sewer payments since September 1, 2022.

d. Weatherization

i. Wx is currently in production. We have completed an additional 9 houses.

ii. We are still actively adding people to our waitlist. iii. We are seeking 2 new assessors to add to our team.

RESULT: DISCUSSED

IV. PROGRAMMATIC REPORT HEADSTART

1. Headstart Programmatic Report

RESULT: DISCUSSED

2. Annual Report

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RESULT: DISCUSSED

V. PROGRAMMATIC REPORT FISCAL

1. Fiscal Report

RESULT: DISCUSSED

VI. EXECUTIVE DIRECTORS REPORT

I. Executive Directors Report

a. Formal Planning of how to move forward requiring and maintaining board members.

i. Serving people who work with us, need to be considered for board positions.

b. Summer Food

i. Community Services will no longer offer summer food.

1. Summer food program will be picked up by County Grant through Northern Illinois Food Bank.

2. Human Services lost considerable amounts of funding through this program.

3. There will still be opportunities to provide food to families through the neighborhood food boxed food.

c. Snap

i. Snap will adjust to pre-pandemic levels for funding, so people will lose funding.

ii. There should still be the Snap program through the Rockford Schools, PBET.

iii. Make sure they know about food bank opportunities.

d. Funding

i. Total grants are about $36 million.

1. If we could get other governesses, to help foot the bill for upper management would free up more funds for programs.

F. Local Government might not know that we need support since they might not know we exist.

VII. BOARD MEMBER REPORTS

a. Aldermen Meeks: Is there a place to offer Taxes

i. Send out flyers for tax preparation.

b. Jeremiah Griffin

i. Take PBET to Butcher ( Like Pinions) and see if you can get meat from them

ii. We should get the word of community solar out to more residents so that they could try to get lower bills.

VIII. GUEST REPORT/ PRESENTATIONS

None

IX. APPOINTMENTS AND RESIGNATIONS

None

X. NEW BUISNESS

None

XI. ADJOURNMENT

The meeting was closed at 1:40 PM

a. Motioned Mike Chamberlain. Seconded Karen Hoffman. All approved. Motion carries.

i. End time 1:40. Total time one hour and twenty-five minutes.

b. Next meeting March 28th 2023 12pm Conference Room B City Hall.

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