City updates grant policy and procedures to reflect dedicated grants division and OpenGov alignment

Christine Howe, the city’s grants manager, briefed council on proposed updates to the city’s Grant Policy and Procedures manual originally adopted in 2018. The revisions define grants more broadly (including settlement, restricted funds and special-purpose funds), simplify conflict-of-interest references by linking to the city policy, and formalize the roles of the mayor and city council, the new grants division, finance and legal.

Howe said the revisions establish a clearer pre-award workflow (internal pre-application checks, legal review and council authorization), award acceptance steps, and post-award management and closeout procedures. She said the grants division will centralize these processes, update standard forms and appendices, create flowcharts for staff training and align fields with the city’s OpenGov grant module to reduce duplicate data entry.

Howe said the updates had been reviewed by finance, legal and department heads and will come back to council for formal adoption after council feedback.