By Mike Donahue
Moapa Valley Progress
The Cappalappa Family Resource Center (CFRC) Board of Directors learned last week the Moapa Valley social services agency is still in the running to receive Clark County Outside Agency Grant (OAG) funds for fiscal year 2010-11.
In a story in last week’s Progress, the CFRC board said they were facing an especially difficult year because they believed Cappalappa had been denied up to 75 percent of the operating funds it normally receives each year in grants.
Those funds include a Nevada grant which totaled approximately $30,000 in 2009 amounting to 25 percent of the CFRC operating budget, and a county OAG grant which last year was approximately $55,000 or about 50 percent of the agency’s operating budget.
While the state grant has definitely been denied, Cappalappa, along with 104 other agencies and programs, is still being considered for county OAG funds.
Cappalappa was premature in assuming it had been denied its requested funds, according to Michael Pawlak, manager of the county’s Community Resources Management Division, the department largely responsible for the OAG program. The division is still in the initial evaluation stage of the grant process; no decisions about the OAGs have been made.
“The county has not determined how much money, if any, will be available (for OAG applicants), when it will be available and what agencies or programs will be recommended for funding,” Pawlak said.
“We’re delighted to learn Cappalappa may still receive county OAG monies,” said Norita Espinosa, CFRC Board president. “Although we know for sure the state has denied our grant request this year, we’re pleased we haven’t yet been turned down by the county. In this economic climate, anything would help.”
A new application process is being blamed for CFRC’s mistaken assumption that Cappalappa had been denied the OAG funds.
In past years, CFRC’s grant application had generally either been approved or the agency had been informed it was still being considered for approval by late July or early August. This was not the case this year.
In prior years the county normally had surpluses that it passed on to agencies and programs in form of the OAG funds, Pawlak said. Beginning in 2009, it was apparent that the economic conditions were anything but normal and the “fiscal problems (of the county) were quite apparent.”
“In 2008 we provided more than $6 million to support non-profit agencies and programs,” Pawlak explained. “In 2009 we had to make a drastic cut and could only provide half, some $3 million, for grants. This year we’re still in an unprecedented budge crises and we don’t know how much money will be available.”
Because of the tenuous economic picture in the county, in late May, in place of the usual request for grant applications, the county sent out a public notice “soliciting OAG ‘Notices of Interest’” from county programs and agencies.
“The purpose of the Notice of Interest was to allow interested agencies or programs to essentially apply for the OAG funds without having to go through the entire grant application process,” which is lengthy, time consuming and involved, Pawlak said. “We wanted to reduce the burden on the agencies. We felt it was unfair for agencies to have to complete a full application package before we knew the amount of OAG funds that would be available.”
As instructed and well before the June 21 deadline, Cappalappa submitted its Notice of Interest and then anxiously waited for some kind of notification.
The “solicitation” for the Notices of Interest stated, “Only those agencies who (sic) meet the submittal requirements of this Notice will be ‘eligible to be invited to submit an application for FY 2010/2011 OAG funds.'”
By the end of July, when CFRC had not received any word from the county about its status or “Notice of Interest” officials naturally and erroneously assumed they had been denied OAG funds.
“We may have jumped the gun in assuming we weren’t going to be funded, but we wanted to alert the community what we were up against,” Espinosa said. “It is better to have been incorrect than have been late and been scrambling for extra community assistance at the last minute.”
Pawlak said a team of county department heads or their representatives is currently reviewing all the applications for the OAG funds.
“We use the upper management to get a broad viewpoint of the county and evaluate how individual (applicant) programs or agencies will be beneficial to the county and its residents” to determine who to recommend for the OAG funds, Pawlak said.
“We’re hoping to finish the initial assessment (of the Notices of Interest) by the end of August,” he said. “Those we intend to recommend for consideration by the Board of Commissioners will be asked to submit additional materials, a complete application.”
Those applications will be submitted to the commissioners who, hopefully, will be able to make a final decision by the end of September or first of October, he added.
So far, 105 agencies or programs have filed notices seeking in excess of $8 million in OAG funds.
“It’s unlikely that all programs that filed notices will get funding or (even) funding to the level they requested,” Pawlak said.
Although loss of the OAG funds would be debilitating to Cappalappa, it would not be the end of the Moapa Valley agency.
“Funding has become more and more limited over the past three years and this year is no exception,” said Ryan Doty, CFRC Board treasurer. “However, through responsible financial planning and common-sense fiscal decision making, the Cappalappa Family Resource Center is a financially sound non-profit organization. While the loss of certain funding and expected decreases has hurt our budgets, we foresee serving the community far into the future.”
