2021-03-02 HCHA Approved Minutes

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HCHA meeting March 2, 2021 the funds is kind of like that first line of defense in terms of program compliance and insuring that everything we're reporting and monitoring is happening but then the Comptroller, the Finance Director and Deputy work really closely to ensure that when it comes to single audit, grant close out, we've done our jobs, right, but also they can accurately reflect the financial accountability and transparency measures, right, that are part of our fiscal life as a County and Finance has been a close partner from the very beginning, in order to really even achieve that milestone of an approved action plan, we submitted a robust set of policies and procedures related to financial management and grant compliance that was structured off of the County's current day to day financial policies and procedures and our systems and then we layered on any additional requirements that we will need to fulfill for these specific grant funds an so a lot of times I look at the 30, 31 pages here, on page 16 that are specific to us and Finance and our team have been working with HUD to ensure that we can comply with all these things since essentially since January 2020 which has helped us get to this point. Kimball: The next question I had was around public engagement and I know that the presentation that was done late last year that was one of the comments that came up was that the level of public engagement was not sufficient, what are you looking at in terms of going forward to improve public engagement, I did look at your survey, I thought I was very well done so good job, do you have any preliminary results in terms on how folks responding pretty well? Please share that. Le: Yeah, I worked on surveys a really good piece of it, you know, between now and when we do prepare that final action plan draft in July, you know, if we weren't facing what we're facing currently with COVID there would probably be more public meetings and what not so we're thinking what is possible beyond the 30 -day public comment period but different ways of engagement, right, including as we've had to do in the past year and half, one on ones with individuals or property owners or folks who are interested in the program but also meeting with kind of who is the folks in the community. I'm really happy to report that you know since we released our survey on Thursday we've received 171 responses as of 9:00 this morning, I think it's really testament to people's interest in what's happening here and how, what the County does including the buyout program but not limited to the buyout program is critical to their lives and their futures, you know we took a very intentional approach around asking peoples, what peoples' future plans are but intentional around being a check all that apply, right, we don't expect that everyone has a clear picture between the choices to return to their inundated property or to pursue the buyout, so all that being said though and I want to be cautious about the data cause you know there's still plenty folks who are out there who really going to take the opportunity to reply, you know, just under 80 percent of folks who've responded Page 12 of 19