Hamilton County Commission Chairman Chip Baker, R-Signal Mountain, is asking his colleagues to consider a more deliberate process for awarding funds to nonprofit organizations, a procedure he said has been haphazard to this point.
"I just think we should have a better process by which we do things," Baker told commissioners at the end of their regular weekly meeting Feb. 1.
A proposed grant application, which Baker handed out at the meeting, would ask nonprofits to submit a statement of need, a description of their project, a timeline, their qualifications and how the organization would sustain services long-term if county funds don't continue. The four-page document includes a series of prompts and the suggested word counts for each query.
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The county would also ask organizations to supply various supporting documents, including their most recent audit, their previous three years of financial statements, their current year's operating budget and three years worth of federal tax forms.
"We allocate funds on a very regular basis ... to very deserving individuals without a process in place," Baker said in a phone interview Friday. "The intent of the grant application process is that there's more detail to why there's a need and how it benefits the county."
Citing specific examples of situations in which a more formal process would have been warranted, Baker pointed to the county's distribution of approximately $70 million of American Rescue Plan Act dollars during the term of former Hamilton County Mayor Jim Coppinger and Mayor Weston Wamp's recent attempt to reallocate $3 million of that money from the wastewater treatment authority to various other community initiatives.
Wamp later rolled back that request to just one item -- $400,000 for softball and baseball lights at East Hamilton High School, which the county is funding through bond money rather than federal relief dollars. Wamp said in a phone call Friday that his office intends to fulfill the remaining priorities during the budget process, adding that most of them were initially suggested by commissioners.
"Worthy contributions were made without a process on exactly how they would benefit the county," Baker said. "Some maybe had more detail. Some a lot less. But (it's) still not a process."
With that additional information in hand, Baker said, commissioners would also need to decide how to go about selecting the organizations that receive funds. That process could be, for example, in the form of a committee.
Commissioner Warren Mackey, D-Lake Vista, commended the proposal in a phone call Friday, stating that it could help the county avoid duplication of services. Previously, Mackey said, organizations have relied on their connections to successfully acquire funding.
"Somehow there has grown up this idea that commissioners have a closet full of money somewhere in the back and all you have to do is give them the magical words," Mackey said. "If they say the right thing, you can go pull the money out of the closet and have their project. But it doesn't work that way."
Although he wasn't at the Feb. 1 commission meeting, Commissioner Greg Beck, D-North Brainerd, said in an interview Friday that he agrees with the idea of developing a more formal process, adding that there's been a need for the county to ease up on the politics associated with awarding funds to nonprofits.
Noting that he's still new to office, Wamp said he can't speak to whether Baker's proposal would mark a significant change in how the county has distributed funding to nonprofit organizations. Before taking office Sept. 1, Wamp said he and Baker had conversations about tightening up similar procedures and improving transparency into how those decisions are made.
"He and I both have a lot of the same thoughts on how the county would put some processes in place," he said. "It would be easier for everybody. It would be easier for our office to field the countless requests we get."
Although there was an extraordinary amount of funding available during the pandemic because of relief available through the federal government, Wamp said, the proportion of county dollars that normally go to nonprofits represents a very small percentage of the annual budget.
Contact David Floyd at dfloyd@timesfreepress.com or at 423-757-6249.