City Council Memorandum
TO: HONORABLE MAYOR AND CITY COUNCIL DATE: JANUARY 16, 2024 FROM: OFFICE OF THE CITY MANAGER WARDS: ALL
SUBJECT: ADDITION OF ONE FULL-TIME ADMINISTRATIVE ANALYST POSITION IN THE OFFICE OF THE CITY MANAGER IN THE AMOUNT OF $54,000 FOR FY 2023/24 – SUPPLEMENTAL APPROPRIATION ISSUE:
Approve the addition of 1.0 Full Time Equivalent (FTE) Administrative Analyst Position in the Office of the City Manager and a supplemental appropriation to the General Fund City Manager Salaries in the amount of $54,000 to cover salaries and benefits for Fiscal Year (FY) 2023/24.
RECOMMENDATIONS:
That the City Council:
By at least five affirmative votes, approve the addition of 1.0 FTE Administrative Analyst position in the Office of the City Manager; and By at least five affirmative votes, authorize a supplemental appropriation in the amount of $54,000 from the General Fund to cover salaries and benefits related to an Administrative Analyst position for FY 2023/24.
BACKGROUND:
The Riverside City Council has declared a priority for the City of Riverside to maximize external revenue generation to address increasing costs for City services and to leverage existing city funding. Envision Riverside 2025 Strategic Plan includes High Performing Government strategic priority Goal 5.4 – [to] Achieve and maintain financial health by addressing gaps between revenues and expenditures and aligning resources with strategic priorities to yield the greatest impact.
The City is a robust grant writing operation and submits specialized grants across departments from small sums to multimillion-dollar applications. The goal of the City’s grant program is to secure funding for services and projects for which the City otherwise would be required to utilize local tax dollars and to secure funding for services/projects which the City otherwise might not be able to afford. The City is also positioning itself to take advantage of a wave of funding at the federal and State level that will provide monetary assistance for city projects and programs over the next five years.
DISCUSSION:
In the period of January to December of 2023 the City was awarded $197,553,014 in grants, a record amount for the City of Riverside. Grants are now written over an expanding number of municipal departments who are taking advantage of new tools to be competitive for outside funding. The challenge now is to keep momentum for future funding applications, while ensuring that current funding is implemented correctly from application, award, program/project setup, implementation, closeout, and post grant monitoring. The City wants to both support its external funding operation while ensuring that current grants are administered and billed correctly.
The City Manager’s Office has been implementing a variety of process and resource improvements to maintain outside funding. In the next several years, the City Manager’s Office would like to implement additional improvements that are detailed below.
Recommended Grants Management Improvements:
Continue in the current form to facilitate grant-writing activities across departments.
Offer grant writing trainings for interested City staff; Work to better facilitate information flow for available funding opportunities across departments (e.g., information regarding eligible and compelling funding opportunities, external grant writing resources, etc.); Conduct a needs assessment on the City’s current Grants Management Database and issue an RFP for a global grants management software system that is an expansion and next alternative to the current data reporting system; Continue to manage and administer the Citywide grant writer panel; Establish a cost recovery policy that incorporates a 10% overhead set-aside for all large grant applications to recoup lawful City overhead costs; Work with departments to map annual funding activity for known grants across departments and develop an annual “application strategy”; Facilitate the pre-development of timely and innovative projects in preparation for future grant submissions; Work to align “match” resources to ensure competitive funding applications; Transform the current ad-hoc grant writer group into a standing working committee to advise on funding processes and technical questions Citywide. This grant committee may have topic subgroups such as climate, equity, etc.; Work with larger grant awards to recruit temporary project management staff as-needed to implement programs and projects and alleviate the loan on the current city staff contingent; and Implement tools to remind staff regarding billing, quarterly and annual reporting, close out, and data retention for audit purposes.
The above model takes a more proactive approach to citywide planning for grant application activity and actively pre-develops projects and aligns match resources so that larger projects have greater competitiveness during annual funding rounds. The model also brings back a standing “grants committee” that assisted the City in setting and administering policies regarding grants and other funding.
Model implementation anticipates an additional FTE in the City Manager’s Office. This position would work predominately in the grants management function but might be called into other administrative projects as needed. The position, as envisioned, would work a majority of its time in grants management, but also assist the City Manager’s Office with departmental fiscal, administrative, and budgetary matters on an as-needed basis at the direction of the City Manager. The cross-functional approach to this new position will ensure that its time is used efficiently in fiscal, budgetary, and revenue generation projects in the City Manager’s Office.
STRATEGIC PLAN ALIGNMENT:
This item contributes to Strategic Priority 5 - High Performing Government and Goal 5.4 to maintain fiscal health by addressing gaps between revenues and expenditures.
This report also aligns with the five Cross-Cutting Threads:
Community Trust – Building grant capacity will serve the public interest by potentially expanding programs and completing projects with external funding; benefiting the City’s diverse populations, and resulting in greater public good.
Equity – Outside funding can be used to allow more City departments to be creative and competitive for grants, resulting in a more equitable distribution of funding opportunity that can reach populations citywide. In addition to grants supporting Citywide operations, City staff also seek grant funding to directly benefit disadvantaged communities and residents in need of aid.
Fiscal Responsibility – The City ensures to maximize outcomes in usage of grant funds as a way to lessen pressure on the General fund and other limited resources.
Innovation – This funding provides the City with the ability to create an innovative program for building capacity with the result in receiving greater external funding.
Sustainability & Resiliency – Riverside builds the capacity to allow more departments to apply for grants and compete for funding that allows the City to adaptively address resident needs.
FISCAL IMPACT:
The total fiscal impact of the action is $54,000 for salaries and benefits for FY’s 2023/24 to be appropriated from the General Fund available fund balance. A full-year FTE will cost $106,000 for FY 2024/25, and will be requested as part of the annual budget for the Office of the City Manager. The position would reside in the City Manager’s Administration budget. Appropriations for future years will be included in the City Manager’s Office Budget submissions for approval by the City Council.
Future funding for this expansion of the grants administration function could be achieved by a cost-offset in the General Fund caused by the collection and allocation of an allowable 10% indirect cost rate on applicable grants. A policy is currently under consideration. If the policy is adopted, this position could be funded under a specially created indirect costs fund in future years.
Prepared by: Jeff McLaughlin, Grants Administrator
Certified as to
availability of funds: Edward Enriquez, Assistant City Manager and Chief Financial Officer/Treasurer Approved by: Mike Futrell, City Manager
Approved as to form: Phaedra Norton, City Attorney
Administrative Analyst – Supplemental Appropriation ● Page 3