AGENCY NEWS

Budget

We have received both good and bad news on our projected revenues for next year. On the positive side we have received a bonus from Magellan in the amount of $165,000. Because of the projected shortfall in FY 2011 revenues, I will be recommending to the Board of Directors that this bonus be set back for now and used in the budget for next year. That bonus will cover the salaries of about 4 staff members for the full year. We have also received word that there will be a third round of disaster funding for the state. My understanding is that there is about $500,000 left in the grant that goes to September 30, 2010. The state has not yet announced how those funds will be divided but I am hoping that we get a substantial amount of that money. Because those funds will be available to spend through September 30^th, I plan on allocating all of that money to next year. We have also received an additional follow up from the company planning to buy property adjacent to us. In exchange for a permanent easement to allow their customers use of a driveway to be built across our parking lot, this company has agreed to resurface our lot, build a play area with basketball court, and pay us a one time fee of $75,000. This fee should come to us in FY 2011 and could be budgeted for operating costs for that year. In addition, the Greater Cedar Rapids Community Foundation has awarded us a $25,000 grant to extend our disaster recovery counseling role for another six months. The combination of these funding increases will give us another full year on the treatment side to either find new long term funding or use natural attrition to reduce our agency expenses to match our reduced revenues. At the beginning of January my preliminary budget estimates for FY 2011 were showing about $500,000 in deficits and a potential need to eliminate about 14 staff positions agency wide. The combination of new revenues and staff resignations has probably eliminated the need for layoffs in our treatment components. Unfortunately, I’m stuck with the need to say “probably” because we still have some things that may change. The two biggest issues that remain are the renewal of our contracts with corrections and whether or not the legislature passes the supplemental funding bill for FY 2010 and the proposed budget for FY 2011. We should know about these issues by the middle of April.

Prevention Funding

Prevention funding for next year is primarily being impacted by the ending of the three year federal grant for rural Linn County school programming. That funding loss coupled with smaller losses on several grants has us with a prevention deficit for next year of about $200,000. The Safe and Drug Free Schools funding in Clinton that pays for our African-American youth program is also scheduled to end June 30, 2010. We have heard that this funding may be extended to December 31, 2010 but have no confirmation on that yet. We are looking at a couple of potential federal grants to replace this lost revenue. Those include a Drug Free Communities Grant to continue coalition building in rural Linn County, an Alcohol Reduction Grant for the schools in Benton County, and an Alcohol Reduction Grant for the schools in Clinton County. Word on the Alcohol Reduction Grants is that instead of 80 grants nation wide they will only fund 9. If that’s the case, the odds of getting one grant in Iowa are steep and two grants for our agency will be nearly impossible. We have both Laurel and Paul working on finding new grant opportunities for prevention with the hope for better news in the next six to eight weeks.

Staff Changes

Mary Austin, Diane Bobey, Amanda Tanner, Rebecca Gosnell, and Casey Dettbarn have all announced resignations this month. We wish them well as they move on to other steps in their careers. We also had to end our employment relationship with Vicki Ratliff who worked as an evening program assistant at Hightower Place. Vicki was unable to meet our attendance expectations. New hires include Rachel Anderson and Donna Sloan as new part time Residential Patient Support Staff and Kristin Conaway as an agency accountant. The accountant role was originally planned for last July but funding questions required us to delay that hire. The positive news received on the treatment funding allowed us to fill that role now. The closing of the Novus Center office at the end of March will move those staff to other locations. Shirley Schneider will move to the main facility into a part time counseling role and will be supervised by Kelly Marsengill. Georgia Eash will move to Rebecca Gosnell’s office at Heart of Iowa and will be working with outpatient women with children. She will be supervised by Gayle Kelly. Darin Person will move to a counseling office in the main facility and will be supervised by Kelly Marsengill. Rachel Kimble will move to the East Office where she will do client billing for agency clients and will be supervised by Angi Greeno. Stephanie Engledow, who is currently the youth counselor on the Rural Linn GRAA grant, will eventually move to the youth role vacated by Casey Dettbarn. That grant ends June 30^th so we will have about a three month overlap while we close out those grant activities.

Upgrades to Parking Lot

The easement agreement for our parking lot on the east side of our main facility will be a nice opportunity to upgrade that lot. The new business next door will put in a new entry driveway for both their parking lot and our lot and will resurface our lot and paint the parking spot stripes. We will be looking at improving lighting and especially the lighting to the steps and along the north side of our building. Once completed, we’ll start asking many of our staff to use that parking lot and keep more spots available for clients and visitors in the spots around the court yard. The agreement also calls for a new fence separating the east lot into parking on the north and a recreation area on the south. The recreation area will have a regulation size basketball court. The remainder of the recreation area will have the asphalt removed and replaced by grass and have a few trees planted. That space will then be set up with lawn chairs and picnic tables to be used as a recreation space for both staff and clients. We expect this work will be done in the spring of 2011 but may be done as early as this fall.

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