Consultant: Luzerne County Council has flexibility on awards

Luzerne County Council has flexibility to change how it wants to award $60 million in federal American Rescue Plan funding to outside entities, the county’s consultant said earlier this week.

Council had initially planned to fully fund those with the highest evaluation scores and cut off awards once the collective total reached the $60 million threshold set by council, which resulted in the original list of 75 eligible recipients.

Now council members are considering lower awards so more eligible applicants could receive funding.

Robin Booth, of Columbia, Maryland-based Booth Management Consulting, told council during a lengthy discussion Tuesday night that it’s not uncommon, even at the federal level, for grant applicants to receive less than they requested.

“I have to say that, because I think some of the applicants thought they would get 100%,” Booth said. “I’ve looked at thousands of federal awards. They never give them what they asked for.”

If council decides to reduce awards, the county would ask prospective recipients to submit a revised project budget incorporating the lower allocation and a timeline for the project completion, Booth said.

Booth told council members they have latitude to change their process.

“You have authority to make different decisions,” Booth said.

Originally, there was a perception the county could run into federal compliance issues if it deviated from the original plan.

The work completed to date was not a waste of time because every document submitted by applicants is required for complete American Rescue project files, Booth said.

Council members are set to hold a special meeting at 5 p.m. on March 7 to further discuss how they want to proceed with awards.

One option is Councilman Matthew Mitchell’s proposal to cap allocations by category, which would allow all 121 eligible projects to receive funding instead of approximately 75. Mitchell said this plan would fully fund 84% of the projects and require the others to specify what work they could complete with a reduced allotment.

Council Vice Chairman John Lombardo said Thursday another possibility is reaching out to all applicants to ask the bare minimum they would need to complete a meaningful portion of their project.

Lombardo said voluntary across-the-board reductions, particularly with big-ticket requests, could allow the county to provide funding to more or even all eligible applicants without imposing caps.

He’s heard from several applicants indicating they could accept less but had asked for the maximum.

At least one other council funding award proposal is expected before Tuesday’s meeting, according to council members.

If a council majority wants to stick with the original full-funding plan, the list of top-scoring recipients would change based on council’s recent scoring of five projects that were inadvertently omitted from the consultant’s portal used for council evaluation.

According to several council members, all five scored in the higher range, which would cause other lower-scoring projects in the original list to be bumped off.

Collectively, approximately $4.3 million in other requests would have to be removed from the top-75 list to fully fund the five projects. It’s still unclear which projects would be cut in this scenario. Council has released the names of all eligible applicants and the amounts they requested, but not their individual average scores.

Separate from the missed five, another issue was raised during Tuesday’s meeting.

Chet Mozloom, executive director of The Lands at Hillside Farms — a nonprofit educational dairy farm in the Back Mountain — asked why his organization’s application did not appear on council’s list of eligible projects.

“I think there might be integrity issues or something missing in data,” Mozloom told council, adding that he believes the nonprofit’s application met all American Rescue eligibility requirements.

“There’s something wrong with that. It doesn’t make sense looking at the original rules,” he said.

Council members said they are researching why the nonprofit’s $32,450 request was deemed ineligible by the consultant.

In yet another issue, Councilman Kevin Lescavage pointed out that West Pittston’s application for funding to help add Susquehanna River levee flood protection for the borough scored high enough to make the top-75 list, but it was skipped over because there was not enough funding available in the $60 million pot to fully fund the $11 million request.

Lescavage said a partial award should have been considered, but council was not aware that a top-scoring applicant “would just get kicked out” if there were insufficient funds.

“That’s a major flaw,” Lescavage said.

Council members Tim McGinley and Brian Thornton stressed the original list of 75 top-scoring projects should not be considered an award list because there won’t be an award list until council reaches the stage of allocating funds to specific entities.

Diane Cowman told council her project, which was among the original 75, hinges on receipt of the entire $203,551.62 requested.

Her small business, Second Family Memory Care LLC, would use the allocation to open a 20-bed residential dementia “village” in downtown Wilkes-Barre.

“I really want you to think with your hearts and heads on this,” Cowman told council.

Wilkes-Barre Attorney Al Flora, who has been assisting a local nonprofit that did not make the top-75 list, said he watched Tuesday’s council work session remotely and believes Mitchell’s proposal seems to be the best way to proceed unless council starts from scratch.

In reading the federal regulations, Flora said council has a lot of discretion in making the awards but must use a process that is trustworthy, transparent and minimizes bias.

The post-evaluation scoring of the five missed applications and complaints from some council members that they had issues with accessing the scoring portal for some applicant pools have made him question the fairness of the entire scoring process. Even if average scores are used, he maintains the evaluation is inherently skewed unless the same council members scored every application in every pool.

“My sense overall is I think they have a mess on their hands and don’t know what to do,” Flora said.