Dear Imagine friends and family,
Today is Fiscal New Year’s Day for Imagine and the State of California. This is the sober version of that holiday.
The budget for Imagine for 2024-2025 is looking good and has rapidly gotten better. The budget for the State of California is unsustainable which affects our ambitions for the new resources.
Given a choice between making hard choices to balance the budget and fully funding past promises, the state government kind of chose neither. The plan is to declare a fiscal emergency during a strong economy to take substantial resources out of the rainy day fund and slow down some spending promises. In Imagine’s case, this means that the final phase of “Rate Reform” is set to take place in January rather than nowish. That also has no impact on reducing next year’s deficit.
Prudence requires that, until California’s budget balances, Imagine set aside substantial funds to protect caregiver wages and leadership positions in the event of funding cuts. The rate reform increases come with the requirement that half of any rate increases go to caregiver compensation.
But the Rate Reform isn’t the only way our next year budget projection has improved in the two months since we passed the budget. In late June, we learned that through separate legislation our FHA will once again be funded in line with group homes beginning today. We have already substantially increased provider stipends and plan to do more before the end of the year with a series of incentives to improve life for our clients and compliance with regulations. But importantly for Imagine, this funding will transition our FHA program from one that the rest of the agency subsidizes to one that supports our infrastructure.
We expect one of our SLS clients to transition to self-determination and the plan is that some of the behavioral support resources will be combined with SLS supports to improve the funding of the program, the wages of better trained caregivers and to better support the agency. Fun fact, by the way, San Andreas Regional Center has eight individuals in the self-determination program who receive services similar to SLS. Four of those are served by Imagine, and that’s going to be five. Let’s take a moment as a community to celebrate our pioneering spirit.
A final fiscal consideration not in the passed budget: Our auditor pointed out that we spend about 1/3 less on administration and overhead as similar nonprofits our size. We have maintained that because we have had very long term administrative staff committed to the agency and efficient with our processes, but even before Heather left, we were aware that the leadership team is pretty consistently spread thin.
Anyway, what the board will receive from management (probably at the October meeting) is a plan that looks at these funding improvements in this way:
- Whatever proceeds there are from rate reform should be divided in two between caregiver compensation and agency reserves.
- New funding added to FHA should be divided between higher base stipends for providers, incentives for providers who meet important standards around client lifestyle goals, safe housing and medical support.
- Other than those related to rate reform, new available resources should be used primarily to sustainably strengthen both the services and administrative sides of Imagine’s leadership team. By sustainably, I mean we won’t spend them all.
We had three great events in June with at least one coming in July. At the start of the month, our client AJ hosted a pool party for some of his peers in the agency. That was a lot of fun. On the solstice we had our Summer Barbecue which was also a lot of fun. And then on the following Friday, we had Ian’s big birthday extravaganza. That was great and it should be noted, we got to hear Bob be wrong about a who sang a song from the 60s. If you missed the party, you missed that too. I did not so you are right to envy me.
And Shared Adventures’ Day On The Beach is coming up on the 13th. This is one of the events that makes Santa Cruz special for people with developmental disabilities. Imagine contributes by leading the registration for the event. If you would like to volunteer for the Team Imagine subsection of Team Shared Adventures, please let me know. If you haven’t registered and would like to, you can do so here.
We want to add a new column to the Spotlight Section of this newsletter. For now, we’re calling it Spotlight on Change. The purpose of this column is to raise awareness throughout the agency and our stakeholders of the changes, small or large, that can be made by using person-centered thinking. We welcome all of our stakeholders to contribute by sending stories and accompanying photos to Maggie or me.
Further down, this month’s newsletter includes the following:.
An appreciation of Eileen, our recruiter, who plans to leave this month after training her replacement. For Imagine stakeholders, especially those with more than one year experience, it would be easy to undervalue Eileen’s contribution to improvements in the quality of our services (and the mood of her coworkers.) I want you all to realize what Eileen has given us in a year.
In The Year of…closing an experiment but no end to trying.
I hijacked Patty’s column this month to give a lecture on communication and reliability.
The Person-Centered Evolution this month talks about the decision making profile.
The Redwood Chronicles has not one, not two but three stories from Jake.
In Community Connections, our next big together in the Age of Rekow, promised.
Our usual stuff in the column around self-determination.
The Advocacy Corner discusses the state budget.
Our monthly Transparency at Imagine column includes a repeat of next year’s approved budget, 2021’s and 2022’s final audits as well as our latest IRS Form 990 as submitted May 15.
This month we have spotlights on a person we serve, a caregiver and a change, to wit, Zach, Julie and Victor and community time with Daniel.
As ever, I am at your service. If you have any questions, feedback or concerns, please don’t hesitate to get in touch. You can write me here. I look forward to hearing from you.
Gratefully yours,
Doug