We were promised that Escambia Children’s Trust would spend the taxpayers’ money wisely and have systems in place to ensure accountability.
If Tuesday night’s meeting is any indication, the Trust is fast becoming a dumpster fire, despite the sincere, well-meaning intentions of its board members.
I hate to say I told you so, but I did write the Urban Development Center proposal was doomed to fail. The program promised to focus on workforce development for 250 middle and high school students a year for three years in the Century – annual budget: $397,556.
This is what I wrote in January:
The Urban Development Center wants money to provide a job development center in the Town of Century for 750 children, ages 11-18. According to U.S. Census Bureau, Century only has 1,979 people, with 18% between the ages of 10-19, which calculates to 356 children.
However, the board believed the research and data in the proposal. They may have second thoughts now.
Urban Development Center has had trouble signing up kids. The group asked the board to lower its age limit to 5. The board sent the request back to its program committee for further discussion.
BUT Urban Development Center already has requested reimbursement for $189,256.70 and is working with only 56 children – of which less than 30 are ages 11-18. Cost per target group: $6,308.
Urban Development Center expenses include $60K personnel, $37K program supplies, $59K sub-grants to partners, and $22K other professional services. Again for 56 total kids – of which 29 are 10 or younger.
And this only covers seven months.
Someone needs to pull the plug and reallocate the remaining dollars elsewhere. A deep audit needs to be done into the $189K already spent.
Here are Urban Development Center’s admissions in its Century_Youth change request:
• We underestimated the need and desire for children outside of our proposed program age range to want to play an active role in the center activities.
• We underestimated the challenge that the children and youth of The Town of Century faced by not having a community-based school culture, which creates proximity and family participation issues.
• We overestimated the desire for youth in our proposed program age range to participate in program activities initially and consistently.
• We overestimated the commitment of parents to actively pursue out-of-school time (OST) and summer program educational activities for their children and youth.
In other words, they did little actual market research before asking for the money.
I have marked the video at the point where the board discusses Urban Development Center.
Few know that the BOCC still funds children’s services programs just as before, and still does it poorly. There are now “two” parallel and very uncoordinated efforts with the main difference that the Escambia Children’s Trust is wholly unaccountable to the public and is armed with its own taxing authority. This mess is only going to get worse with time. The BOCC can clean things up at anytime. It can immediately create a Children’s Services Program Board tasked to review and make recommendations about all requests now presented to the BOCC to include those where to date the Sheriff has been involved mostly as a rubberstamp. The Board would have to be supported by at least one full-time county employee with real expertise in children’s services programs. Someone from the Finance Department would have to help audit the money trails. Each month, the Board could meet and review whatever requests are in the que. A representative from each group would be required to be present to answer any questions. The list of recommended requests would then go to the County Administrator to present to the BOCC for action. It would be a very standardized process with everyone knowing the rules. Importantly, groups would not be allowed to directly lobby commissioners or board members. It would be a fair and objective process. I bet we might also see money going to different groups now mostly cut out of the BOCC’s “good old boy” process. And the BOCC might also redirect some requests to the correct agency like the school board, etc. The school board has the state law authority to fund the many requests now related to Escambia County Public Schools. If the BOCC wants an even more formal structure, state law describes how it can form a Children’s Trust as a “dependent” special district. Doubt that the BOCC has ever read the law. At the same time, the BOCC can vote to put the Escambia Children’s Trust question back on the November 2024 ballot. It could be sold as a way to give money back to working families struggling to make end’s meet. Right now, the Escambia Children’s Trust is probably creating more poverty than it ends as too high taxes are always a bad thing. By 2025, Escambia County could have a unified process for funding children’s services programs and measuring effectiveness. There would be more transparency too because right now these groups are not required to reveal who else they are asking for money. They appear to shotgun out the requests asking money from different agencies and people often for the same thing. We also don’t know how much the group’s pay staff as a finder’s fee for bringing home public dollars. Groups should be required to reveal if public money is going to go into a private pocket.