County Board of Supervisors · Tuesday, September 29, 2026, 9:00 AM · Item 9 · REGULAR AGENDA
Final report and recommendations from the CORE Subcommittee
In plain English
The Board would adopt the final recommendations of a two-supervisor subcommittee (Supervisors Cummings and De Serpa) that would reshape how the County gives grants to local nonprofits under the CORE Investments program. Funding would be narrowed to three safety-net areas — Food and Nutrition, Housing and Homelessness, and Health — with priority for seniors, people with disabilities, children and families, and other vulnerable people regardless of gender or immigration status. A yes vote would set aside up to $1.5 million for food assistance (naming Grey Bears, Meals on Wheels, and Second Harvest Food Bank) on a three-year cycle and keep $1.5 million for the County's Housing for Health Division, leaving roughly $2 million open to other nonprofits on a two-year cycle with funding tiers of up to $25,000, $100,000, and $350,000. It would also end the third year of the current funding cycle (except the Housing for Health set-aside), pay the Community Foundation of Santa Cruz County up to $80,000 to run the application review, create a two-member Board subcommittee to review recommendations, and require final funding decisions by the first Board meeting in May 2027.
Local nonprofits that feed, house and provide health services to county residents would compete under new rules and a shorter timeline, and groups currently funded would lose the third year of their grants unless they win in the next round. Programs outside food, housing and health — such as education and learning programs funded in the last cycle — would no longer fit the County's stated priorities.
Key facts
- For the 2025–28 cycle the County contributed $4.879 million in General Fund revenues and the City of Santa Cruz contributed $1.08 million, a combined total of $5,958,853.
- Set-asides: up to $1.5 million for Food and Nutrition (Grey Bears, Meals on Wheels, Second Harvest Food Bank, three-year cycle) and $1.5 million for the Housing for Health Division; about $2 million would remain open to other applicants on a two-year cycle.
- Funding tiers would be Small up to $25K, Medium up to $100K, and Large up to $350K, with at least 20% of non-set-aside funding reserved for the small and medium tiers.
- The Community Foundation of Santa Cruz County would be paid up to $80,000 from the existing CORE budget (GL 392500) for work running Q4 2026–Q2 2028; no additional General Fund money is requested.
- The County closed a $23 million deficit for FY 2026-27 and projects the gap growing to $67 million by FY 2028-29, driven in part by the 2025 federal law H.R. 1 and cuts to Medi-Cal and CalFresh.
Reasons to support
- In the last competitive round, 80% of services from proven, existing programs that had previously received support were not recommended for funding; the subcommittee says that decision was made without analyzing the impact on service users, nonprofit job losses, or community consequences for homebound seniors and low-income families.
- Nonprofits asked for a simpler process: in the subcommittee's survey (35 responses from 27 organizations, a 26.5% response rate), 65.7% pointed to the length and complexity of the application and 57.1% to the review and scoring process as areas needing improvement.
- The Human Services Department told the subcommittee that a new full competitive process for FY 2027-28 would be challenging with current staff capacity after the loss of grant funds for consultants and budget-driven staffing reductions, and that targeted funding streams and foundation-managed grants would be more manageable.
Reasons to oppose or change it
- Ending the third year of the current cycle takes away money that existing grantees were counting on; organizations would have to reapply under new rules with decisions not final until the first Board meeting in May 2027.
- Naming Grey Bears, Meals on Wheels and Second Harvest Food Bank for a $1.5 million set-aside moves back toward supervisors choosing specific nonprofits — the practice CORE was created in 2016 to replace after criticism that funding concentrated among a small group of established organizations and left little room for new or emerging groups.
- Narrowing priorities to food, housing and health means programs funded last cycle under Lifelong Learning and Education, Thriving Families and Healthy Environments would no longer match County priorities, and the $80,000 Community Foundation contract comes out of the CORE grant pot rather than new money, while the report acknowledges the CORE allocation has not increased in two cycles even as costs and need rise.
- At the August 19, 2026 community meeting, some commenters warned the tier structure could push small organizations toward 'request-maxxing' — asking for more than they need — and asked how the County's other, non-CORE contracts would be counted in scoring.
Official wording
Consider final report and recommendations of the CORE Subcommittee, and take related actions (Board of Supervisors - Third District and Second District)
Summary written by claude-opus-5 from the agenda and the Staff Report. It can contain mistakes. The official documents govern.