Manatee falls short in meeting needs of poorer residents, report says

When it comes to meeting the needs of Manatee County’s low- and moderate-income residents, the county has fallen short on nearly half of the strategies established to address needs for affordable housing, reducing homelessness, support programs and more, a report shows.

When Manatee officials developed its 2012-17 Five-Year Consolidated Plan, the county received input from the community as it set out a series of strategies intended to meet the county’s priorities. The plan, which is required because the county receives federal funding, lays out goals to address housing, public services, transportation and other needs in the community.

“To carry out these strategies, Manatee County has developed objectives and measurable outcomes that it will undertake each year,” the report stated.

But as the county enters the fifth and final year of the plan, 16 of the 35 strategies remain unmet. Some, such as its goal to assist 200 more children in programs that provide youth or childcare services for low- and moderate-income households, have not been addressed at all.

Of the strategies set out in 2012, the county has been able to exceed the goals in 15 of the remaining 19 strategies that they’ve met.

Early Learning Coalition of Manatee County, which contracts with nearly 150 providers around the county including DC’s Child Care Center 2, 5105 26th St. W., is familiar with unmet needs in the community. ELC has a waiting list of nearly 750 children for either voluntary prekindergarten or school readiness programs.

“There is always a wait list in our county,” said Sharon Oakes, chief operations officer of ELC. “We continually bring children off the waiting list, and parents continue to apply for the waiting list. Unmet needs generally always have to do with funding.”

Since the county receives federal funding, Manatee County is required to complete the Consolidated Annual Performance and Evaluation Report, or CAPER, each year. The plan details the county’s accomplishments during the year in meeting the goals outlined in the five-year plan.

In 2015-16, Manatee County received $1.6 million in Community Development Block Grant funds, $437,074 in HOME Investment Partnership funds and $142,607 in Emergency Solutions Grant funds.

The county’s funding in 2015-16 went to projects including sidewalks along 26th Street East, intersection improvements in Samoset, United Cerebral Palsy of Southwest Florida adult day training center renovations, Allean’s Loving Care, Turning Points and Centerstone of Florida.

A majority of the unmet goals and objectives fall under the public service category, but there are also limited funds available for these programs, said Bill O’Shea, the county’s community development project manager.

Federal rules allow Manatee County to spend only 15 percent of the grant every year on public services and economic development. For 2016-17, this amounted to $244,149.

“Even if people come forward, we can only spend a fraction of the grant on public services,” he said. “They are really more focused on housing and community projects.”

As they begin working on a plan for 2018-2023, Manatee County officials say they’ve done all they can on the unmet goals identified nearly five years ago. The county has grant workshops as well as community meetings each funding year to get feedback about needed programs.

“A lot of the ones we haven’t hit we would rely on outside nonprofit agencies to come in and ask for those monies. We haven’t had anyone come forward,” O’Shea said. “That’s why we haven’t really had any activities reported under those categories.”

There are other areas where the county has exceeded the five-year goals set out in the CAPER report. Housing rehabilitation for low- and moderate-income and special needs households is one area where the county has exceeded the proposed accomplishments set out in the plan. The county proposed to rehab 23 units, but instead has rehabbed 54.

“Manatee County addressed the housing, health, welfare and homeless needs of our community during the 2015-2016 Fiscal Year,” this year’s assessment states. “Manatee County is working diligently to meet the priority needs established in our Consolidated Plan in the expenditure of these federal funds.”

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which oversees the CDBG funding, mandates that the county complete the report annually. The report, which lists accomplishments, projects and other initiatives that were addressed during the fourth year of the plan, will go before the county commission in a public hearing Tuesday.

Unmet priorities are not uncommon, O’Shea contended.

“Many jurisdictions that receive CDBG funding essentially go through the same thing,” he said. “There are activities that are identified but they are not met. This is not unique to Manatee County. This is something that happens throughout all jurisdictions receiving this type of federal funding.”

Manatee County looks to next five-year plan

With a new Consolidated Plan for the next five years on the horizon, county officials are already working on it, which is due to HUD along with the first year’s action plan on Aug. 15, 2017.

“This will be a brand new public input, so whether or not some of the priorities identified for this Consolidated Plan are the same is yet to be seen,” O’Shea said.

By Jan. 1, a survey should be available on the county’s website, mymanatee.org, to gather public feedback about needs that exist in the community and public meetings are expected to follow in January and February, O’Shea said.

“The CDBG program is largely based on community input,” he said. “It’s what the citizens want so when we do our outreach for the Consolidated Plan, we take the things people are telling us they need the most and prioritize those in the Consolidated Plan.”

In previous years, the county has gone to places such as Walmart, churches, libraries and schools to talk with the community about what they would like to see, O’Shea said.

As the county develops this next plan, O’Shea said they may target some of the low- and moderate-income neighborhoods and speak at neighborhood association meetings.

“We are going to get a bigger bang for our buck,” he said.

Unlike previous years, Manatee County has a new department that is focused on redevelopment and economic opportunity.

The new department, which formed earlier this fall, could help in “getting some of those ideas to move forward in future years,” O’Shea said.

Geri Lopez, the department’s director, said she plans on studying all the objectives in the plan.

“There are a lot of them,” she said. “It makes it very difficult when there are so many of them.”

As a way to scale down the number of objectives, there could be focus groups set up to go through and prioritize the needs, Lopez said.

“Then it will be very clear that these are our top three and will be more achievable and attainable moving down the plan,” she said.

Manatee County relies on community to meet priorities

Unless an outside agency comes forward, many needs will continue to be unmet, O’Shea said.

“Unless somebody comes forward and asks for those dollars, they will be left unmet because those are the types of activities that the county is not staffed to do it on their own,” he said. “We just don’t have the staff to do some of the programs.”

Pointing to the child-care needs, O’Shea said they wouldn’t be able to do those at county facilities.

“We obviously need someone to come forward and ask for those dollars to carry out those programs,” he said. “Historically, they have just been left unmet.”

During the grant cycle last year, there were a couple new nonprofits who were capable of providing these services that haven’t been funded. Due to the federal requirement of having to spend the money in a certain period, they opted to not apply for funds, O’Shea said.

“There has been some interest expressed from people thinking of doing some new things who run nonprofit agencies in other states, but they just weren’t ready yet to get money yet,” he said.

As the county’s redevelopment and economic opportunity department gets to work, Lopez said she hopes to create more of a point system when trying to meet the priorities.

“For this coming year, what my hope is to develop more of a ranking system, looking through those objectives that we haven’t met and how tie back into initial goals,” she said. “I don’t believe we’ve necessarily done a point system before even if it is just a preliminary one.”

When the county puts out its request for grant applications, Lopez said they will be very clear that particular areas will be high priorities and given extra points.

“We are really seeking to try to do something within this objective,” she said. “Sometimes it’s really dependent on what organizations and nonprofits can do the work. We can definitely try to encourage those.”

Nonprofits work with Manatee County

As a recipient of CDBG funding for its Project Smile program, Turning Points has helped with some of the objectives, according to Adell Erozer, the organization’s executive director.

But moving into future years, housing — especially for low-income individuals — should be a high priority, Erozer said.

“We don’t do housing and that’s where most of these are aimed at: housing,” she said. “That’s actually a big deficit in Manatee County that we don’t have an agency or a group that has taken leadership for the community in providing this plan to get more low-income people into housing.

“I am hoping that they make it a priority to develop some sort of housing units for that population, which is a big population,” she added. “What we are really missing in this county is leadership.”

For at least the past five years, the Salvation Army of Manatee County has been at capacity, according to Major Dwayne Durham.

“We are strapped,” he said. “It needs to be a multifaceted approach.”

With three acres around the Bradenton facility, the Salvation Army is looking to expand, but that expansion will cost $15 million to 20 million.

“And it would probably be full instantly,” said Kelly Brown, director of community relations and development with the Salvation Army. “We would still be at capacity.”

While there are a lot of people who want to work on this, there needs to be one entity to take the leadership role, Erozer stressed.

“I don’t think that entity exists right now,” she said.

This story was originally published December 12, 2016 at 3:41 PM with the headline "Manatee falls short in meeting needs of poorer residents, report says."