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Board adjusts nonprofit grant math, agrees to divide allocations by six
Summary
Trustees agreed informally to recalculate community-grant averages over six organizations (not seven) to avoid penalizing groups with missing entries and discussed allocating a $40,000 placeholder from tobacco taxes to help fund a middle-school counselor.
Trustees debated and then agreed to an adjustment in how community-grant allocations are averaged after several organizations were effectively penalized when a blank entry was treated as a zero. Speaker 9 said some organizations felt "penalized" by the spreadsheet math, and Speaker 6 proposed spreading any small overage proportionally rather than treating blanks as zeros. "I haven't done the math until just now, but I do think Ross and I, our organizations were penalized... counted as zeros," Speaker 9 said.
Speaker 8 moved to implement the averaging-by-six approach and said, "I'll make a motion." Speaker 2 later summarized the outcome: "So we'll divide by 6. We'll be a little over our 1%, but it's small dollars in the grand scheme of things. Everybody okay with that?" Trustees voiced assent; staff said no formal roll-call vote was necessary because this was an allocation within the overall budget framework.
On tobacco-tax allocations, Speaker 1 noted the revenue stream is declining and that a conservative projection of about $200,000 for 2026 could be consumed by the school district's request for middle-school counseling services. Trustees agreed to place a $40,000 placeholder in the budget and ask the district how that amount would translate into staff time or service. "I think we should budget for the 40 and then see how it helps," Speaker 7 said; staff said they could hold the allocation as a placeholder and finalize arrangements with the district or nonprofit partners later.
The board directed staff to present a final spreadsheet and confirmed the averaging approach and the tobacco-tax placeholder ahead of the budget's next review.
