New city grants office seeks more revenue and partners; ARPA spending largely committed with 14% cash remaining

City officials described the newly centralized grants office's work, ARPA project status and plans to expand support for internal departments and regional partners. Skyler Brown of the city's grants team said the office has assisted with roughly $15 million in revenue and $21 million in expenditures year‑to‑date across federal and state awards; she noted expenditures can temporarily exceed revenues because of reimbursement timing and multi‑year awards. On ARPA, grants staff member Caleb Stanton reported the city had spent about 86 percent of ARPA funds and held roughly 14 percent cash on hand; of 68 ARPA projects the city identified, 40 were complete, four had been canceled and five had not yet started. Skyler said the grants office has added a citywide grant writer (Cole Wicker) and is pursuing new opportunities, including a recently submitted application for a CoC HUD Youth Homelessness Demonstration Program (UFA build) in collaboration with Catholic Charities for approximately $6 million and a $15,000 equipment grant for the Fire Department. She said the office is exploring software to give city staff visibility into awards and to better coordinate drawdowns and reimbursements. Staff emphasized the importance of recovering administrative overhead in grant budgets: many federal awards allow direct and indirect cost recovery, and staff encouraged departments to budget administrative and indirect costs where allowable. Skyler said the federal de minimis indirect rate was recently increased from 10 to 15 percent and that for certain city programs (CHHS/homelessness work) internal allocation plans already return substantial indirect support to central functions. Grants staff also described a new approach to help regional nonprofit partners apply for foundation or state awards that the city cannot directly receive: the city would support application and potentially serve as an accounting manager for subrecipients, with costs reimbursed through award administrative fees where allowed. Staff said this model received preliminary support from the state resource (MRSC) and that city staff had begun outreach to organizations such as the MLK Center. Staff asked departments to use an internal grants SharePoint form to request help with research, applications or compliance; the grants office said it will return with more detailed tracking and reimbursement reporting to show net revenue impacts from grant activity.