At their August 24 meeting, the HCCBG Advisory Committee noted that August heralds the start of Buncombe County’s Fiscal Year 2023. It is, therefore, time for the committee to begin collecting year-end reports from the FY2022 grantees. They are also planning to conduct site visits with FY2023 grantees to help them get to know the organizations that have just received a total of $2,209,090 in grants – $1,709,091 of that was allocated to Buncombe County by the state from a block grant received from the Federal Government. The remaining $500,000 is contributed from county taxpayer funds.
Concurrent with those activities, this small team is also working to finalize the FY2024 application. The committee will make those applications available sometime in the first quarter of 2023 (likely February). They will then receive and evaluate those
applications before the start of FY2024 in July 2023.
Three Buncombe County staff members work with this eleven-member committee. Four of those eleven seats are vacant right now. Four of the current seven committee members are in their second (and final) one-year term, which expires in October.
Seeing a citizens committee populated with such intelligent and articulate volunteers was very refreshing. The staff and committee members seemed to appreciate each other. The committee chair kept the meeting on the agenda, and she concluded the meeting on time.
They do not do a perfect job of making meeting materials available to the public, but that could result from being so short-handed. The list of 2023 grant amounts and brief organization bios are prominently visible and accessible on their main web page. They will also update the page with information on applying for the FY2024 funds once that information is available. Our complaint is that meeting agendas, minutes and in-process documents are not readily open to the general public. However, if you email county staff, they will forward the requested materials cheerfully.
Please see First Tuesday’s HCCBG Committee webpage and the Buncombe County Aging Services webpage for more information about the work of this committee.
