Leaders of Yolo County's American Rescue Plan workgroups presented the Board of Supervisors with updates on how meetings have been going and provided recommendations of the possible funding plans.

The American Rescue Plan (ARP) is a stimulus plan that provides funding to local and state governments. The funding plan was designed to address and help facilitate the recovery from the economic and health effects caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

On Sept. 28, the board approved the formation of five workgroups — mental health, community parks and facilities, child, youth and families, food security and housing and homelessness —  to work through specific priority areas within the ARP plan.

The workgroups have been meeting and checking in with board liaisons over the course of the past several weeks. Since the beginning of October, staff has convened each of the five workgroups at least three times and met with the board liaisons at least once with the primary focus to develop a framework for how each set of priority categories could be divided ahead of tackling individual projects.

"The first phase of the ARP process ensured that all five categories began on equal footing and were not enclosed to only considering existing ARP proposals" Eric Will, ARP project manager, told supervisors last week. "So that is to say looking outside the boundaries of just what was proposed and just what was considered during the community workshops to make sure that we were looking at the entire continuum or existence of what ARP could be used for."

Karleen Jakowski - the child, youth and family director with the county's Health and Human Services Agency - led the presentation concerning the child, youth and family workgroup. Jakowski shared the primary goals of the workgroup with the overarching objective being to preserve, enhance and expand the existing continuum of childcare in Yolo County.

"Our childcare continuum was challenged before the pandemic," Jakowski explained. "The data that our workgroup reviewed was compelling and really noted how our childcare challenges were exacerbated as a result of the pandemic."

The workgroup's other objectives included targeting systematic change that enhances diversity, equity and inclusion countywide and increasing the network of local resource family homes and culturally reflective placements throughout Yolo County, Jakowski said.

The budget of the children, youth and families workgroup is $5.5 million. Each workgroup recommended how the priority categories could be divided into further subcategories in order to adequately meet the pressing needs of the communities.

Staff recommended that child, youth and family be divided into childcare, needs assessment and priority needs implementation, equitable outcomes/partnerships, and child welfare.

"The primary objectives reflect the subcategories and are matched with the subcategories because we wanted to make sure that when we were looking at outcomes and major goals for this group that we are linking that to actual implementation and really investing these dollars in a meaningful way," Will said.

The housing and homlessness workgroup, which has a budget of $7.5 million, found two main primary objectives during their meetings. The two objectives were enhancing emergency and crisis response by targeting disproportionately impacted communities and enhancing the housing continuum of care by increasing affordable housing options.

Two subcategories were decided upon including emergency and crisis response and capital investments and housing needs with $6 million being allocated toward the capital investments.

"As capital investments are usually much more significant in dollars, the workgroup and board liaisons worked to ensure a healthy amount of funding going towards that subcategory," Will explained.

The food security workgroup's primary objectives focused on projects focusing on low income and food insecure children, families and seniors, bringing resources to underserved rural areas and implementing projects that are innovative and sustainable.

The food security workgroup's $3 million budget was divided between general food projects, senior matching funds, rural matching funds, senior projects and children's matching funds.

"The breakdown for food security is focused on individual populations as that was the approach indicated by the workgroup as we started to go through the data," Will stated. "Making a targeted approach as we look at these groups allows for some flexibility with our money."

The community parks and facilities workgroup presented five subcategories of capital investment, programming, marketing and equipment for their $3 million budget.

The final ARP workgroup presented during the lengthy presentation pertained to mental health. The workgroup, which was allocated $500,000 by the board, presented four main primary objectives: enhancing education in the community, training staff and community members with lived experiences to support those living with mental illnesses, increasing support group opportunities and increasing services for those in custody with mental illnesses.

Staff anticipates returning to the board on Dec. 7 with further updates and certain time sensitive proposals.