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Summit County Council confirms advisory boards for new Community Empowerment Fund
Summary
Council confirmed appointments to advisory boards for the Summit County Community Empowerment Fund, a field-of-interest account seeded with opioid-litigation funds at the Akron Community Foundation; the council also authorized a supporting organization that will manage a larger corpus for long-term grantmaking.
The Summit County Council on Monday confirmed multiple advisory-board appointments tied to a newly named Summit County Community Empowerment Fund and approved the structure for a supporting organization that will manage a longer-term corpus for grantmaking.
Donna Skotis of the county executive’s office told the council the field-of-interest fund was established with a $5,000,000 gift from opioid litigation and is housed at the Akron Community Foundation. "That field of interest fund has now been named. It is the Summit County Community Empowerment Fund," Skotis said, and the council was being asked to confirm appointments to the fund’s advisory board.
The council adopted M0142026, confirming Vernon Sykes, Larry Moore, Tracy Buckner, Pastor Deonte Lavender, Terry Heckman, Toya Kelker and Marquetta Body to the field-of-interest advisory committee. The motion passed on a voice vote; no roll-call tally was recorded on the transcript. A separate motion, M0152026, confirmed members to the supporting organization’s board for the Summit Health and Safety Innovation Fund, including David James, Chris Burnham, Robert B. Cooper, Bishop David Parker, Don Taylor and Lori Pesci.
Skotis described a parallel supporting-organization arrangement to hold a corpus endowment that will generate sustained funding: "There are six members appointed by the county executive. There are seven members appointed by ACF," she said, noting the structure reflects IRS requirements for a supporting organization. She also said the county’s field-of-interest account had grown slightly to about $5.08 million "as of Monday."
Council members publicly thanked staff and organizers for the work that led to the funds. Skotis said the next administrative steps are completion of a gift agreement and the IRS designation for the supporting organization; only after those are complete will the corpus transfer and formal grantmaking begin.
The council also confirmed several other appointments in the same session, including reappointments to the Children’s Services Board and a reappointment to the Metro RTA Board of Trustees. The meeting record shows motions were made and carried for each appointment without further debate.
The appointed advisory boards are expected to begin meeting to set policies and procedures for distributing grant funds once the legal and tax-structure steps are finished.
