County, Feeding Laramie Valley say they’re resolving ARPA spending issues
The nonprofit was accused of spending funds outside the proper time frame and failing to provide receipts for $44,000 of expenses. FLV admits the first, denies the second and is working to fix both.
Earlier this month, the Albany County Commission delivered a second notice of default to the local food justice nonprofit Feeding Laramie Valley.
The county’s allegations were numerous. Among other charges, the letter claimed the nonprofit had spent funds outside of the allowable time frame, reported inaccurate totals, and did not account for some $44,000 worth of expenditures in the receipts they provided.
The nonprofit has responded to these allegations and both the nonprofit and county are now collaborating on a resolution.
On the issue of time frame, all parties are in agreement: federal money was spent outside of the allowable time frame. The money awarded could only be used to reimburse purchases made during a specific window of time — but Feeding Laramie Valley used it to reimburse expenditures made in the year before that window opened.
“Obviously there are things that need to be worked out in terms of this contract,” said Gayle Woodsum, founder and director of Feeding Laramie Valley’s parent organization Action Resources International. “I’m just interested in resolving it so we can all move forward with our work.”
The allegedly inaccurate totals and receipt discrepancies are a more complicated matter — but both the nonprofit and the county think they’re nearing a resolution. According to Feeding Laramie Valley, the receipts were always there and submitted appropriately. According to the county, the receipts were either inappropriately or confusingly submitted. In any case, both entities now acknowledge the receipts exist and both report that they’re working together and will be able to sort the matter out before a fast-approaching April deadline.
That would be good news for the county and Feeding Laramie Valley — as well as nonprofits across town — given the likely consequences of not resolving the issue.
The money is ultimately federal money awarded to the state and distributed through the county. If the county cannot show how the money was spent, it could jeopardize the community’s federal grant status and torpedo the county’s ability to receive any federal grants going forward.
The issue is serious enough that during a meeting earlier this month, commissioners warned a lawsuit could follow if the discrepancies are not sorted out.
“We need to get this done or we’ll have to move to the next step, which is taking our money back,” Commission Chair Pete Gosar said at the time.
The day after that public statement, he called Woodsum and spoke to her personally.
“My whole conversation was to get it right,” Gosar recounted this week. “We just want to get it right. There’s a lot riding on it for you, for us, so let’s just get it right.”
Woodsum said she appreciated the call.
“It was a challenging conversation because people are upset — but it was good and productive and helpful,” Woodsum said. “And I immediately also contacted the grants management office and set up a meeting. The first thing we’re going to do in that meeting is go through step by step what they’re asking of us.”
And this week, Deputy County Attorney Jennifer Curran reported to the commissioners that this meeting had taken place and that the county and the nonprofit are nearing a resolution.
Background: The county awards Feeding Laramie Valley $102K
About one year ago, the commission awarded Feeding Laramie Valley more than $102,000 from the county’s pool of American Rescue Plan funding. They awarded a total of $440,000 to various government agencies and nonprofits to help with pandemic and inflation-related costs that were making life difficult for the county’s poorest residents and the organizations that serve them.
Now the county has to report to the feds how that money was spent. And that means the nonprofits have to report to the county what they spent it on.
Curran told the commissioners last month that every other organization except Feeding Laramie Valley had filed the mandatory grant reporting in a proper manner.
“(But) what we’ve received from them is problematic,” she said. “For Feeding Laramie Valley, there are numerous deficiencies in the information that was received and in the reporting.”
Among other issues, the county accused the nonprofit of spending money outside the grant’s allowable time frame, reporting inaccurate totals and failing to submit receipts for some $44,000 of expenditures.
Since that early March meeting, Curran and members of the county grants office have met with Woodsum and others from Feeding Laramie Valley to get to the bottom of these reporting woes and resolve the matter.
When was the money spent?
Feeding Laramie Valley doesn’t deny that money was spent outside the appropriate window. But Woodsum said there was confusion surrounding the grant’s proposal process and the parameters of the grant itself.
Woodsum said this was the first grant her organization had sought from the county — and only went after it because it was federal money, not local. In general, Feeding Laramie Valley eschews local government grant funding — such as the city/county community partner grants awarded annually — so as not to compete with other local nonprofits.
Traditionally, Woodsum said they focus on partnerships or go after federal funding. The ARPA funds in question were indeed federal funds, but they were unlike the grants Feeding Laramie Valley had chased in the past.
Some of the available ARPA funding was “emergency funding,” which meant a nonprofit could use it to recoup money already spent.
“Which is a rarity,” Woodsum said. “That virtually never happens with grant funding or any kind of funding. So that was very helpful.”
Since the beginning of the pandemic, Feeding Laramie Valley — like other nonprofits across town — has been hit with unprecedented challenges. Woodsum said her organization likes to focus on the bigger issue of food justice — building a sustainable, reliable, local food system that makes emergencies and supply chain issues less common or less traumatic.
But she said there will always be a need for emergency support, which is another area of focus for Feeding Laramie Valley.
“The need for fresh food and vegetables quadrupled, the cost quadrupled, and the challenge to the staff was suddenly new and different — frontline workers were suddenly putting themselves in danger to actually provide services,” she said. “We were — and still are — so overwhelmed by the emergency need that we need to pay careful attention to make sure we’re still working on the core issue that makes that need go away.”
So Feeding Laramie Valley’s original proposal to the county included a request for money to recoup what the nonprofit had spent — mainly on food — since the start of the pandemic. The county approved this proposal.
The problem is that the rules — for the federal funding itself — only let nonprofits cover expenses made during or after March 2021. Feeding Laramie Valley used it to cover expenses made as far back as April 2020.
One complication is that the contract for those funds — signed by all the connected parties — includes contradictory information about that start date.
The contract includes the nonprofit’s original proposal, which makes it clear that the nonprofit intends to cover expenses from 2020. But it also includes language dictating the grant’s actual, official time frame.
The contract itself implies two different time frames. Woodsum said it’s the sort of thing that would typically be caught before nonprofits and agencies sign.
“I missed this — there’s no doubt about that,” she said. “But so did the people who wrote the contract and so did the people who signed it. So a whole bunch of us messed up in terms of catching that date.”
Setting aside the issue of the date, Woodsum said 100 percent of the money was spent the way the nonprofit said it would be.
“A portion of that grant is outside the allowable dates, but it was still all spent on food,” she said. “We purchased food, just as our proposal stated. We paid for food that had been purchased and given for no charge to hundreds of people in Albany County.”
Unspending the money
The county has requested that the nonprofit rebudget the funds it received to instead cover expenses made during the correct time frame.
Curran told the commissioners this week that the nonprofit needs to rewrite and resubmit its budget and project proposal, making sure that all expenses fall within the right time frame and all spending is accounted for.
“We talked through the changes we need there and the changes to their budget that they were going to make,” Curran said.
If the nonprofit can’t use all of their awarded ARPA funds to cover expenses in the allowable time frame, it will have to return the rest to the county.
Curran told the commissioners the county is expecting Feeding Laramie Valley’s corrected budget and project proposal by April 11.
Where are the receipts?
The county also accused the nonprofit of providing inaccurate, incomplete or “messy” receipts. Earlier this month, the county said Feeding Laramie Valley failed to provide receipts for about $44,000 of expenses covered by the $102,000 award.
During an interview last week, Woodsum said her organization had all the receipts for every expenditure, but would not explicitly say if she thought the county was wrong in claiming the opposite.
“I have no thoughts on that,” she said. “I’m just telling you the fact that we have a receipt for every item that was reported as an expenditure — and it’s been there all along.”
Curran shed some light on what likely occurred as she addressed commissioners Tuesday.
She said an email from Woodsum to County Grants Manager Bailey Quick has some receipts attached.
“ … and there was also, at the very bottom of it, a link to a Dropbox folder that had additional receipts,” Curran said. “We missed that on our end.”
But she added the link was broken and — after acquiring a new link from Feeding Laramie Valley — the receipts within were disorganized, cut off or duplicated in inappropriate ways.
“There were some receipts that were in multiple folders, but they were only used in one,” she said, by way of example.
Quick added that it was time-consuming to work through and sort out the receipts provided. One employee worked for at least six hours to go through the initial report.
“They’re messy,” Quick told the commissioners Tuesday. “Every other nonprofit we get receipts from, it’s laid out right there, organized. So it’s frustrating, I’m not going to lie. But we’re trying to work with them.”
From all vantage points, the situation has improved from earlier in the month — when county staff were discussing the future of federal funding and commissioners were floating the idea of a lawsuit.
From the commissioners to the attorney’s office to the grants office, most of the people involved seem convinced that a resolution can be reached — and that sometime next month, the county will have corrected, accurate information about how and when the money they awarded last year is being spent.
Woodsum said she’s committed to the same goal, which will allow her organization to refocus on its community mission of building a resilient, reliable food system.
“We want to fix this and we want to fix this collaboratively with the funders who we’ve been working well with,” she said. “We’ve had years of working really well with the Albany County Commissioners and we want to continue that. So we’ll sort this out one way or another.”