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Rowlett council backs amended MOU to let Salvation Army manage city utility assistance with relaxed limits
Summary
City staff asked the council to revise how a $31,000 city utility assistance fund is administered; after discussion the council signaled consensus to amend the existing MOU to let the Salvation Army administer the program with relaxed caps (proposed $400 twice a year) and staff will return with MOU language and monitoring details.
City staff recommended the Rowlett City Council amend a memorandum of understanding so the Salvation Army can administer the city's locally funded utility assistance program with fewer federal CDBG restrictions, and the council signaled consensus to proceed.
Christophe Farmer, the utility billing staff member who presented the item, told the council the city has been allocating $31,000 for utility assistance in a project account that rolls forward year to year. He said the Salvation Army has been following Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) eligibility rules that include a caps and a 12‑month rolling period and that those restrictions have limited the agency's ability to distribute assistance. "They thought they were out of funds. They're not," Farmer said, noting the dedicated fund carries forward.
Staff compared Salvation Army's federally informed restrictions with a separate nonprofit, SCORE, which in past years has provided senior services and some utility help but serves only residents 55 and older. Farmer recommended selecting a single provider for the program to avoid "forum shopping," and offered options including raising the cap and allowing assistance every six months instead of once a year.
Councilmembers expressed support for keeping the Salvation Army because it already has a built infrastructure to process applications for municipalities and can be made more flexible by amending the MOU. One councilmember summarized the council'level view: use the Salvation Army but remove some of the restrictive criteria and monitor fund usage over the next year.
Staff said the unspent portion of the project account remains available (council discussion estimated roughly $13,000 had not been expended in recent years) and that the MOU amendment would be the mechanism to implement revised eligibility and cap rules. Councilmembers asked staff to consider incorporating some of SCORE's nonutility services where feasible and requested follow‑up reporting to ensure funds reach residents.
Next steps: staff will draft MOU amendments that relax the cited restrictions (including the proposed increase in per‑family assistance and the move from a 12‑month to a 6‑month recurrence option), circulate the material to council, and return with a timeline and monitoring plan. The council did not take a formal recorded vote at the meeting; members indicated consensus to move forward with the Salvation Army option.
