Human Services Committee Meeting

This week's human services committee has a couple of significant items on it.

Emergency Homeless Shelter---The Homeless Coalition is a group of local non-profits that have banded together to develop solutions to homelessness in Washington County.  The want to build an emergency shelter for homeless single adults, a need that is currently unaddressed in the community.  They believe they can get the funding for the building costs and operations of the facility.

They are asking the County for use of county land, either through a low-cost lease or no-cost lease.  The site they have in mind is within footsteps of the human services building, which would allow for a strong integration of long-term support with the emergency shelter.

Overall, my initial impression is that this is a good idea with a lot of positives, one that fits within the realm of compassionate conservatism.  I met with two key members of the homeless coalition on Friday to learn more about the program they are developing, and was very impressed.  Since the land is County land, it makes sense to offer the use of that land for a project that benefits the community.

The best part about this project is that they are not asking the County for any money, just use of county land.

Priority-Based Budgeting---We will be discussing the programs related to human services that were rated in the lowest quartile with the priority-based budget.  The goal of priority-based budgeting is to examine those programs and consider changes that will reduce the cost the county occurs.  Options may include staffing changes, users fees, identifying grant options, reducing the scope of the program, or any other logical solution.

As I looked through the initial results, I saw something unusual.  The human services committee spends 26% of the county budget, and the list of low-priority items totaled about 140 programs.  I was expecting about 25% of the programs on that list, roughly 35 programs, to be human services programs.  Instead, only 8 programs from the human services department made the list.  I think that speaks to the importance of everything that the Human Services Committee does.