Rockford Sun

City of Rockford Community Action Agency Executive Committee met March 18.

Here are the minutes provided by the committee:

I. CALL TO ORDER 

Attendee Name	Organization	Title	Status	Arrived
Karen Hoffman	City of Rockford	Alderman	Excused
Dorothy Redd	City of Rockford		Present
Jeremiah Griffin	City of Rockford		Present

II. ACTION ON MINUTES 

1. Approval of Minutes from February 18, 2025.

RESULT: APPROVED [UNANIMOUS]  MOVER: Jeremiah Griffin SECONDER: Dorothy Redd AYES: Dorothy Redd, Jeremiah Griffin EXCUSED: Karen Hoffman

III. GENERAL INFORMATION 

A. Community Action Bylaws 

1. Faniqua Hughes: We are going to need any suggestions or input for the bylaws submitted by the next CAA Board meeting on May 20th 2025. So far have we had any recommendations be submitted?

i. Ebron Tyson: One so far. It was more so a question of a grammatical error than a change in policy.

2. Faniqua Hughes: What Anqunette was telling me over the phone is we have some state updates is there is a report we have to submit that would state we have updates to our bylaws pending. We would then have to submit those bylaws by May. We would need some time to prepare them for vote for the next full CAA board meeting.

3. Jeremiah Griffin: I will have something in April for the Executive Committee. That way we can look at them and change it.

B. Federal Budget Continuing Resolution 

1. Faniqua Hughes: The Continuing Resolutions has passed and all of our programming does have funding for the fiscal year through September 2025.

2. Christopher Greenwood: HUD did release the COC grant to us but they rescinded them because the language in there was not legal and incorrect. That will be hopefully be reissued as soon as possible.

3. Jeremiah Griffin: I think the only question was the funding. We got our funding, correct?

i. Faniqua Hughes: The continuing resolution passed last week.

There was a fear of the government shutting down. It keeps us funded through September. For Head Start, it’s flat funding so no increased or cuts.

ii. Jeremiah Griffin: The fear was all of the funding was getting cut.

It doesn’t seem to have happened.

iii. Faniqua Hughes: For Head Start, there was always going to be some funding for that. It was a little different for community services. It was a question of flat funding or any decreases.

4. Christopher Greenwood: We still don’t know where the $13 billion dollars in cuts are going to come from in the bill. In our state meeting this month, they told us they believe we will keep our funding as it was. It will be flat funding without a COLA. At least we are not losing funding.

5. Faniqua Hughes: For the Head Start side, we have received our grant award. Our grant ends March 31 and begins April 1. The Change of Scope came back; they wanted more information. It came back at a good time because our partnership with Hand in Hand is ending. Neither side wanted the partnership to end but there were changes with Illinois’ Work Smart Start Grant. The guidelines changed. So, the we met with the Executive Director of Hand in Hand. She did her budgeting and the numbers came out to be a loss of approximately $25,000 per month. We agreed that the partnership would end at the end of the program year. If Illinois changes the parameters of the grant, we would look at another partnership in the future. Because of that change and the need for us to still serve, we are shifting how we are serving kids. We will be putting 3 to 5 full day class rooms at PACE. We meet in April with the YMCA about continuing our partnership with them.

IV. OFFICER REPORTS 

A. Jeremiah Griffin: Northwest Neighbors had another meeting. We had continued dialogue regarding Mercy Health Rockford Memorial Campus.

B. Jeremiah Griffin: Spark Center has applied for the grants and funding we have used over the past couple years. We are still waiting to hear back from that.

V. ADJOURNMENT 

The meeting was closed at 11:27 AM

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