Finance committee reviews Office of Community Services budget, presses for grant reconciliation and case-tracking upgrade

The Finance Standing Committee reviewed the Office of Community Services’ FY27 operating priorities and community-grants recommendations during its May 4 meeting.

Aisha Young, director of the Office of Community Services, introduced Erin Lee, the office’s social work care coordinator, who walked the committee through program changes aimed at improving grantee oversight and resident outcomes. Lee highlighted a rebranding effort to distinguish OCS from other local agencies, increased site visits, two quarterly “progress sessions” to encourage timely reporting from grantees, and a new enrollment-navigation role. "Our enrollment assistant, Evie Hernandez, became a certified navigator through Maryland Health Connection," Lee said, noting Hernandez can now assist residents through open enrollment and explain plan details.

Lee described efforts to extend the city’s rental-assistance program window (from four months historically toward a target of eight to nine months) and to reduce repeat recipients by tying assistance to additional supports such as financial-literacy coursework and delinquency-rate monitoring. "We started to track repeat applicants in FY25 and FY26," Lee said. She told the committee OCS currently records client histories in spreadsheets but recommended a case-management system, Capstone, to create a unified client record across years and improve outcome measurement.

Council members pressed for more precise accounting. One member noted the mayor’s proposed budget lists $443,000 for community grants, while OCS materials showed $418,000 projected and $375,000 proposed for FY27; Lee said she would follow up with a reconciliation. The review team reported 62 grant applications this cycle and said the bulk of recommended funding targeted housing and homelessness-prevention programs; the presenter said the largest category funded was homelessness prevention (reported as $330,700 by the panel).

Committee members also questioned specific awards and criteria. Lee said awards were generally driven by what applicants requested and scored according to a published card that prioritizes services meeting city needs, evidence of collaboration, local residency (75% goal), and diversified funding. She noted that some longstanding allocations — for example, a match that enables a county funding stream for Chesapeake Crossroads Heritage — required exceptions to the typical $5,000–$20,000 award range.

The committee asked for several follow-ups: a reconciliation of the community-grants totals in the city budget and the OCS materials, FY26 adopted-grant columns to appear in the committee spreadsheet for comparison, and more site visits to validate grantees’ programming and sustainability claims. Lee said OCS will provide the requested clarifications and that Capstone remains a prioritized FY27 personnel/technology enhancement.

Next steps: staff will return with the requested budget reconciliations and more detailed grant documentation; Council will consider amendments to the list of recommended awards during budget deliberations.