Social Service Contracts Proposal

[Max Lars]

Colleagues,

Since our sub quorum's earlier post, staff has released its detailed recommendations on social service contract reductions — $5.42 million across 77 of the 155 contracts reviewed. My office looked closely at the contracts that serve Austin's children and families. Two things stand out, and both come from the July 31 memo.

First, there isn't a clear explanation for the decisions. “Strategic alignment” is listed as the reason to reduce 49 contracts and, at the same time, to leave 77 contracts carrying that same label untouched. The memo does not show how the review produced one result rather than the other. Council should be able to see that reasoning before it adopts the reductions.

Second, staff flags real harm in cutting or eliminating several of these programs — unique services with no alternative provider, programs that the City funds entirely, and families who would lose support mid-service.

As I said at the Audit & Finance Committee meeting in discussing the audit: "This is an audit of the City's system for purchasing, monitoring, and assuring the delivery of essential services." We did an audit to see if we were getting the services we are paying for. That's not the same as saying we don't want the services. In fact, it's the opposite.

Austin should expect accountability from every organization that receives public funds. We should fix weak performance, end genuine duplication, and retire outdated scopes.

But, very importantly, what we SHOULD NOT do is let a contract cleanup quietly reduce our overall investment in children and families without deciding to do so on purpose. Making sure we're getting the service we're paying for should not result in a de facto determination to eliminate the service altogether.

The audit was meant to show us where services weren't being provided well. It was not meant to determine that we don't need or want the services.

The children-and-family contracts proposed for reduction or elimination total roughly $2.2 million in cuts — about 40 percent of the $5.42 million in total reductions. The final tax roll produced around $4.7 million in new ongoing revenue. I propose the following: 1) Setting aside an amount equal to the verified reductions in these services and holding it while the City resolves each contract. This would be a single funding action. It is not a restoration of individual contracts. 2) Direct the manager to return with recommendations for each affected contract: maintain it, modify it, or reduce it--stating the specific reason, any documented performance concern, whether any provider can absorb the service, and the expected impact on children and families. We should recognize that if we're reducing a contract for whatever reason, that money may be well (maybe even better) spent elsewhere to serve children and families. It may need to be redirected to create a stronger investment in children and families.

This is the purpose of the IFC our sub quorum described last Thursday.

Our aim is to protect and preserve the needed investments that advance the priorities Austin has set for its children.

This is not calling for a blanket restoration of every contract. Where the evidence supports a reduction, the City should make it. Where a contract needs to be improved, the City should improve it. Where the case for a cut to important services is not clear (services that we have previously determined we need and want), the City should maintain the service — and keep any real savings invested in better outcomes for children and youth.
While I have been focused on child and family services, this proposal can also apply to other social services contracts.

Simply put: Preserve the investment. Improve the contracts.

We’re asking staff to discuss this at the meeting tomorrow.

Thanks--

Kirk
On Behalf of Mayor Watson

[Jose Chito Vela]

Mayor,

I agree with your proposal and think we should expand the approach you suggest to the entire array of social service contracts under discussion. I appreciate the information staff has released but I would like to understand more about the outcomes we are achieving from these contracts. To reiterate your points, the goal is to get the best outcomes possible for our community. If there is a contractor not meeting performance goals, then we should consider moving or consolidating the contract. But we still want to achieve the goals, not just cut the funds.

Additionally, I also want to understand from city staff what they think is a long-term sustainable level of overall funding for our social service programs and why they picked that level of funding. I'm glad we have the additional $4.7 million in property taxes to help defer some of these proposed reductions, but we need to understand what a stable level of funding is so both the city and our nonprofit partners don't endure the uncertainty, stress and time involved in hashing out these funding decisions budget after budget.

Chito

[Krista Laine]

Thank you, Mayor, for highlighting and clarifying our shared intention to preserve and sustain the services provided through our social service contracts. I concur with the idea of broadening the scope across all of the important focus areas that our social service investments support.

Efficiency and investment do not have to be mutually exclusive when evaluating our social services. Through thoughtful and strategic investment, we can maintain, and ideally expand, our reach in supporting our communities while also effectively measuring outcomes and identifying opportunities for savings without reducing service levels. But we must do this the right way, with appropriate transparency, collaboration, and a commitment to ensuring that any efficiencies strengthen, rather than diminish, the services our community relies on.

I look forward to tomorrow's discussion.

Krista

[Ryan Alter]

Colleagues,

I want to provide a slightly different option than what has been offered so far, that is more aligned with staff’s proposal we heard last week. My goals in this proposal are largely aligned with those outlined above. First, I believe we should be making real investments in children and families. I also believe that the social service contracts that serve the rest of the population are vital for our city. For instance, preventing violence doesn’t just help the victims of that violence, it allows public safety resources to be more readily available for everyone.

Beyond these goals, we also have a responsibility to identify sustainable funding for the services that make supportive housing work. Right now, the budget only allocates $2.1 million of the total $7.8 million needed for supportive services with on-going dollars. This means that next year, we are going to be struggling to both work through even larger cuts to social services and figure out how we find $5.7 million to operate the supportive housing we built and invested in as a community. We cannot keep kicking the can and budgeting crisis after crisis year after year. That is why I believe dedicating this $4.7 million in additional on-going revenue to the local housing vouchers is the most responsible approach.

However, that does not foreclose the goals we all share in investing in social services – our kids and families included. As laid out by staff, if we dedicated the $4.7 million to the local housing vouchers, there will be an additional $2.5 million in the Housing Trust Fund and $2.25 million in the HOPE Fund to restore some of the cuts to social services. These funds can be used to pay for many of the social services that get and keep people housed including contracts within the basic needs, behavioral health, child and youth, homelessness, and even workforce development.

In using these funds for social services, I do not believe we should be funding contracts that are not performing, something included in the Mayor’s proposed IFC and previous post. To that end, I am not ready to commit to restoring all or even $4.7 million worth of these contracts until I know that we are not going to be funding low-performing contracts. Accountability matters. These dollars should be helping people and if they aren’t, we need to redirect them somewhere else where they will.

Sincerely,
Ryan