Brewer presses on interim solutions for overcrowded Beacon sites

I'm not very patient, so I have a question.

Is this more money?

Is it more space?

What is the holdup?

I understand if you have to do an RFP and you've been talking about it, I got that.

But in the interim, is it more money?

Because there must be others that have high demand too.

Right.

I don't want to necessarily.

say that here's the dollar amount that we would need because we have to do that.

I think we want to make sure that we look at what is the funding need?

What do we need in order to properly fund these programs and potentially expand?

And so that's the deeper dive that we need to do now so that when we do determine whether or not additional dollars are needed,

or there's an actual need in this community, it's intentional.

We have data.

Do you have some sense of how many have this kind of wait list?

Is it, you know, like half or a third or something like that?

We would have to get back to you on that one.

Okay.

All right.

But I don't, this could be years, what you're saying.

I mean, I'm just saying, years for this RFP.

No, our commissioner is...

I know she's on it, but meanwhile, literally 20 friends, I'm not kidding, when I say 20, are taking their kids after school to work with them because there's no other place for them to go.

I just have a question, too, because even to Councilmember Rose's question,

Often I know that there's times where even when there's contracts out and there is an RFP, if they see that it's a long wait list, DYCD has come in to add slots to programs and places.

And so my question, why, especially if you're even saying, like, you know you're getting calls and you know the need, why haven't there been a consideration to add additional slots?

Is it a capacity thing?

Like, I'm trying to get an understanding because I don't feel like the question that Councilmember Brew's asking is being answered.

No.

And I apologize if it hasn't been answered.

We want to make sure that it's equitable across the board.

And so we do need to do an assessment to determine where are these pockets and determine where we do need to add more dollars.

We want to make sure that it's a stabilized funding stream and it's equitable across the board.

And so we want to be intentional.

And so that is the primary reason why we wouldn't necessarily say, okay, so this location is going to get additional dollars because then we'll be.

Yeah, no, I know that.

But like, so in the last 20 years and when we're doing the evaluation, has there been evaluations to kind of see where there might be some programs that have less seats or who aren't meeting their enrollment and things like that?

Because there has been shift in contracts.

Like, because I know you're saying like, oh, we're doing this evaluation.

I have ran these programs.

There has been times where it was like, okay, we're shifting seats.

And so, especially with these RFPs being so long, why hasn't that been done?