110 E. Main Street Los Gatos, CA 95030 ● (408) 354-6832 www.losgatosca.gov
TOWN OF LOS GATOS
COUNCIL AGENDA REPORT
MEETING DATE: 08/04/2026
ITEM NO: 18
ADDENDUM
DATE: August 3, 2026
TO: Mayor and Town Council
FROM: Chris Constantin, Town Manager
SUBJECT: Allocation of $20,000 in Supplemental Sustaining Grant Funds and Consideration of Continued Funding Eligibility for Counseling and Support Services for Youth (CASSY)
Remarks:
Attachment two contains public comments received before 11:00 a.m. on Monday, August 3, 2026.
Attachments received with the staff report:
1. Proposals Received for Requesting Supplemental Sustaining Grant Funding Attachments received with this addendum:
1. Public comments received before 11:00 a.m. on Monday, August 3, 2026.
MEMORANDUM
To: Rob Moore, Mayor
Ashby Monk, Chair, Finance Commission
Chris Constantin, Town Manager
Gabrielle Whelan, Town Attorney
Cc: Wendy Wood, Town Clerk
Kristina Alfaro, Director of Administrative Services
From: Phil Koen, Member, Finance Commission1
Date: August 2, 2026
Re: Request to Table Agenda Item 18 (August 4, 2026)
Item 18 should be tabled. Too many questions about the rental assistance program are unanswered, and they should be settled before the Town puts more money into it. The Finance Commission takes up the Community Grant Program, which includes rental assistance, at its August 10th meeting. The Town Manager can confirm this.
The Commission has clear authority to look at this. Town Code section 2.50.200(a) directs the Finance Commission to review Town finances and advise the Council on financial and budget matters. Section
2.50.225(a)(2) requires it to review the Town Manager’s proposed budget. Community Grants are part of that budget. The Council itself directed on August 19, 2025 that Sustaining Grants be listed in the budget by recipient and amount. The Commission only recommends. The Council still decides.
Rental assistance is a worthy use of public funds. That is exactly why the Town should know the money is going to organizations under rules the Town can check. The Item 18 report does not show that. Three problems stand out.
First, the request does not match what the Council approved. On August 19, 2025, the Council set aside $20,000 for rental assistance and directed staff to work with St. Vincent de Paul and the Los Gatos AntiRacism Coalition to divide it fairly.
That is not what happened. On October 10, 2025, the Town signed a single grant agreement awarding the full $20,000 to the Coalition. The Coalition’s own proposal, attached to that agreement, states that it will pass $10,000 to St. Vincent de Paul and that St. Vincent de Paul will have full discretion over those funds.
The split was made by the grantee, not by staff. The same agreement also bars the Coalition from delegating any part of the project to another organization without the Town’s written consent.
The Item 18 report now calls the same money a grant to the Coalition as lead agency, and one current request again asks to pass part of an award to the other organization. I would ask the Town Attorney to confirm two things: that the signed FY 2025-26 grant agreement complies with what the Council approved on August 19, 2025, and that transferring grant funds to a second organization is consistent with the agreement’s own terms.
Second, we cannot see how the money is spent. Sound rental assistance programs share a few basics:
written rules on who qualifies, proof of need, separation of duties so that the person who reviews an application does not also approve it or release the money, payment sent straight to the landlord or utility, a limit per household, and a written record of every decision. The Town has not said which of these apply, whether every provider must follow the same processes, or who checks.
The current requests show the problem. The Coalition wants to spend its award on storage unit rent, security deposits, application fees, and hotel stays for people who have already lost their housing. Those may be worth doing, but they are not rental assistance. The Council has never discussed widening the program that far. A grantee should not be setting the scope of a Town program in a funding request.
ATTACHMENT 2
Third, the way the Town delivers this service does not add up. Three organizations now provide rental assistance under two very different arrangements.
West Valley Community Services works under a contract that runs from July 2025 through June 2030, at up to $15,000 a year and $75,000 in all. It provides its Comprehensive Emergency Assistance Program to low-income Los Gatos residents. The work includes rent help to prevent eviction, deposit help to house people who are unhoused, and utility help to prevent shut offs. Each client also receives three months of follow-up support and referrals to services such as job placement, financial counseling, and shelters. West Valley commits to twelve Los Gatos households a year, three each quarter, and bills monthly with an itemized invoice showing who did the work, at what rate, and on what date.
The other two organizations receive grants with none of that. No written scope, no number of households promised, no invoicing standard. Neither the Item 18 report nor the August 2025 motion mentions the WVCS contract at all. Note also that deposit help for people who are unhoused is already covered by the WVCS contract, and that is part of what the Coalition is now asking the Town to fund again.
These are two different approaches to the same problem. Under the contract a payment is one part of a case. The household is assessed, the payment is made, and the client then receives three months of crisis intervention with referrals to other help. The grants buy the payment alone. Nothing in them requires an assessment, a case plan, follow-up, or any record of whether the household was still housed six months later. The Town has never decided which approach it wants, or whether it means to pay for both.
The three-way split traces back to Item 21 on June 18, 2024. The motion first called for rent relief to be awarded competitively, capped at $10,000. It was then amended to drop the cap and simply split the money equally among up to three organizations. The same motion gave the nutrition grant to Live Oak Nutrition alone. One motion, two services, opposite approaches, and no reason recorded.
Senior nutrition still runs through one organization at $23,000 a year, with one organization to hold accountable. Splitting rent relief by arithmetic spreads the money thin and spreads accountability thinner.
Dividing the work among three organizations does not by itself produce a higher quality program, and a higher quality program is what the Town should be aiming for.
These are questions about how the program is built and whether more money should go into it now. They belong with the Commission. I ask that the Commission be given the chance to recommend whether these funds should be awarded now, held, or returned to the General Fund, and on what terms.
Waiting costs little. The money is in the FY 2026-27 budget and does not expire until June 30, 2027, and no organization has a signed agreement counting on it. The CASSY question stands on its own and can go forward on August 4.
Respectfully,
Phil Koen
Member, Finance Commission
Town of Los Gatos
1 The Commission has not reviewed this memo. It was not told this item was coming to the Council. I learned of it over the weekend. This is my own work, submitted as a member of the Commission.