Title
Water Residential Assistance Program - FY 2017 Update
Body
Agenda of: September 13, 2017
Item No.: 2017-380
Amount: N/A
TO: The Honorable
Board of Directors
Great Lakes Water Authority
FROM: Sue F. McCormick
Chief Executive Officer
Great Lakes Water Authority
DATE: September 8, 2017
RE: Water Residential Assistance Program - FY 2017 Update
MOTION
Upon recommendation of Sue F. McCormick, Chief Executive Officer, The Board of Directors (Board) of the Great Lakes Water Authority (GLWA), receives and files the Water Residential Assistance Program - FY 2017 Update; and authorizes the CEO to take such other action as may be necessary to accomplish the intent of this vote.
BACKGROUND
The Water Residential Assistance Program (“WRAP”) provides sustainable funding for qualifying low-income residents served by the Great Lakes Water Authority’s (“GLWA”) customers. The program is funded by GLWA at an amount equal to 0.5 percent of budgeted revenues with the initial FY 2016 funding level of $4.5 million combined for water and sewer services. Funding for FY 2017 was $4.7 million
The scope of funding uses includes a) payment assistance and b) water audit and water conservation measures. Eligible residential customers with a past due bill and/or who are in active shut off can receive assistance with paying down arrears and receive $25 toward monthly bill payment assistance annually up to $1,000. High volume water users can receive a one-time home audit and home water conservation services up to $1,000. Maximum annual assistance per household is $2,000. To participate in WRAP, an applicant must have household gross incomes at or below 150% of the federal poverty income thresholds. Customers with water usage at or above 120% of the average residential usage are eligible to participate in a water audit and install water conservation measures. WRAP participants are also encouraged to participate in both financial coaching and water conservation workshops as well as other support services. The program is administered by Wayne Metro Community Action Agency (Wayne Metro), a nonprofit agency.
The WRAP began providing assistance to customers of GLWA on March 1, 2016 and has the potential to serve over 120 communities within the GLWA service area. In order to assist qualified households each community must opt into the program and sign a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) with Wayne Metro. To date, 62 communities have opted into WRAP. A list of participating communities is presented in Table 1A. Table 1B shows the monthly progress on customer communities opting in WRAP since March 1, 2016.
FY 2016 Activity: The launch of the WRAP did not begin until March 1, 2016 and initially only the City of Detroit opted into the program. Other communities slowly began opting into WRAP after several customer outreach events. Due to the lag in suburban customer communities opting into WRAP, a majority of the FY 2016 allocated funds to each of the participating counties had remained uncommitted. Attached is Table 2, which shows the committed dollars for each of the participating counties as of June 30, 2016. Excluding the funds uncommitted to Detroit, the suburban customers had uncommitted assistance and conservation/repair funds of over $2.2 million through June 30, 2016.
FY 2017 Activity: Detroit demand for WRAP funds continued to outpace the demands from the participating suburban communities. Due to level of uncommitted suburban funds at the end of FY 2016, the Board of Directors, on the recommendation from Wayne Metro, approved the reallocation of uncommitted FY 2016 assistance dollars to the City of Detroit and to the proposed City of Flint allocations at its meeting on April 26, 2017. Table 3 shows the impact of the reallocated funds as well as the funding commitments made through June 30, 2017. As can be seen, excluding Detroit, the combined uncommitted funds from the suburban communities is still almost $3.8 million. With 62 communities opted into WRAP, 8 more communities working through the MOA process and the increased outreach to the non-participating communities, it is expected that the pace of committing funds for the suburban communities will increase into FY 2018.
Changes to WRAP during FY 2017: Issues raised by the non-participating communities included concerns about time and resource commitments to implement all of the program elements of WRAP in relation to the number of households that will benefit within their local community. In addition, requests for adding a provision for change out of fixtures that contain trace amounts of lead aligns with GLWA’s mission to support health communities were also heard. In an effort to increase the number of GLWA customer communities opting into WRAP, the following changes to the program were approved by the GLWA Board on November 30, 2016:
1) Allow communities to opt into specific features of the WRAP. For example, a community could choose to opt into the monthly assistance feature, but not the arrearage assistance feature. Providing this flexibility to communities may ease concerns about time and resource commitment concerns and maximize the benefit based on need.
2) As part of the plumbing and repair feature of the program for those qualified households with over 120% average annual water usage, fixtures in the home that pre-date the lead free plumbing code change will be considered eligible for replacement as part of the one-time $1,000 per household allotment.
Additionally, the contract with Wayne Metro (GLWA CS-010) was also amended to extend the contract by 4 months to June 30, 2018 in order to align the contract expiration date with the end of GLWA’s fiscal year on June 30, 2018. This will allow for better tracking and budgeting of future program commitments by aligning with fiscal year projections instead of the “program year” approach that was initially envisioned.
Outreach to Non-Participating Communities: After the changes were made to WRAP, Wayne Metro along with the Community Action Alliance partners from Oakland, Macomb, Washtenaw and Monroe Counties, reached out to the suburban communities not participating in WRAP to communicate the program changes. Wayne Metro also partnered with Project Innovations and GLWA to help develop a communication packet to distribute to each community. Included is the letter sent on June 6, 2017.
Proposed FY 2018 Allocation: Consistent with the initial funding allocation for WRAP, the FY 2018 budgeted allocation is based on the proportionality of the revenues derived from each county and the City of Detroit, based on the approved FY 2018 water and sewer service charges. Table 4 shows the allocation of the FY 2018 budgeted WRAP funds, which is reflective of the approved FY 2018 Budget of $4.9 million.
BUDGET IMPACT
None
COMMITTEE REVIEW
This matter was reviewed by the Audit Committee at its meeting on September 1, 2017. The Audit Committee unanimously received and filed as presented.
SHARED SERVICES IMPACT
This item does not impact the shared services agreement between GLWA and DWSD.