Regarding Ottawa Food..
Some recent questions made recently regarding Ottawa Food, and how I see the answers.
Couldn’t we just streamline Health Education to make room for the Coordinator position?
Given the cuts to Health Education, the department has already seen significant reductions in its operations and capacity. Remaining Health Education programs were all reduced significantly and are being completed by the most senior health educator currently at 0.6 FTE.
The Health Education budget currently supports a manager, a part-time supervisor, and one health educator (0.6 FTE). Current workloads with the reduced personnel following the recent cuts would simply not allow significant time for any member of the Health Education team to dedicate to Ottawa Food coordination efforts.
Why did the Ottawa Food coalition place a pause on the cooperative effort?
According to the coalition’s press release, the coalition felt it was prudent to pause the model of Ottawa Food as it’s been operating, rather than continue without a full-time coordinator. They made a point of noting that the collaborative still exists but all regular monthly and quarterly meetings and other activities are on pause.
The previous Coordinator is still working at Ottawa County. Why can’t she simply take up her previous role?
Unfortuntely, there is simply no funding in the Health Education budget for her to carry out the work of Coordinator. She continues to be employed by OCDPH, but has been reassigned to Environmental Health Food Safety with more focus on Food Safety Education because of the requirements of the grant we used as alternative funding for her position. That funding does not allow her to work on coordination issues for Ottawa Food.
Why is this coming to the Board now?
The idea that Ottawa Food would very likely have funding issues, and that the coordinator position was at risk, is something that has been know for some time. Indeed, I personally proposed a general fund contribution to the Health Education line to explicitely fund the coordinator positon during the Budget process. This proposal was voted down.
Subsequently, Public health went to the Administorator with the proposal to potentially shift some savings from the closure of the Hudsonville Office towards partial funding of the coordinator position. After initial discussions at the beginning of November, there has not been any more information on this possibility.
So, we are at a crossroads where the need still exists and the funding has not been appropriated. The Board knows of this, and a number of Commissioners have been working now to help make that funding happen.
Why can’t Community Action House take over the coordination role, especially given that we awarded them nearly $500,000 during the ARPA process?
The previous Board did indeed make a grant to Community Action House (CAH) as contractee for an expansion of the Lakeshore Food Rescue plan. Part of that grant stipulated that CAH would hire three full time staff to help in that expansion. If we were to reach out to CAH and ask or direct them to move one (or more) of those three FTEs to a Ottawa Food coordinator role, it would obviously hobble CAH’s efforts to carry out food rescue county-wide, which was the entire purpose of the grant. Additionally, It is very uncertain whether that would even be financially possible, as our funding for 2024 is down to supporting only half those positions, or 1.5 FTEs.
It is important to reiterate that the Ottawa Food program is not receiving any funds on an ongoing basis from this grant, nor were they ever provided funding for staff. They were simply the granting and coordinating agency for the contract with Community Action House, as can be seen in the below infographic.
Couldn’t the collaborative itself provide for a full-time staffer for Ottawa Food?
It might be possible for us to push off the responsibility for funding the coordinator position onto the OF partners, but that would simply take away current capacity from these organizations and their work. It is my belief that Ottawa County can and should be a force multiplier, and not a force detractor, by funding this position ourselves.
How much fresh funding is needed?
The Health Department has outlined that, In order to fully fund a health educator (0.9 FTE) to serve specifically as Ottawa Food Coordinator for FY24, the Health Education line would need the following in addition to what has already been allocated (salary, fringe & indirect costs provided by fiscal services):
• Salary & Fringe Health Educator at .9 FTE: $83,731
• Indirect & CAP for supporting .9 FTE: $33,493
• Mileage: $1000
• Conference and Training: $1000
• Office Supplies: $300
• Postage: $600
• Printing & Binding: $750
• IT Operational: $400
• TOTAL: $121,274
It is worth noting that staff support was also provided by another Health Education health educator to run the Senior Project Fresh program and that clerical support was provided from the Health Education Clerk. Neither of these costs are listed above.
Given all this, what do you think we should do next?
My takeaway from all the discussions so far is that we all support what Ottawa Food is doing, and we all realize that a coordinator is necessary to the work it does.
I believe our differences center around who should pay for that position. Should it be us, with fresh funding, should it be us with existing funding only, should it be Community Action House, should it be Spoke, should it be MSU Extension, or maybe should all the members of the coalition together find a way to pay for it themselves?
I believe that we can and should assume leadership on this, and not take a backseat or even worse, a bystander role here. The fight against food insecurity should be a county-wide one, and as the entity that by definition encompasses all of Ottawa County, it makes the most sense that we take up the leadership role. However, I don’t believe we can do that with existing funding levels, and thus fresh funding is paramount to make this effort work. It is my hope that we see this vital item placed on the next Finance agenda so we can assume the responsibility that the Ottawa community is asking of us.
