Administrative Costs For Allocating Federal Funds in Midtown?

Does it strike anyone funny that from an $815,000 grant for Midtown projects, $163,000 is going towards administration costs? We’re assuming that is what it costs to provide Michael Murphy and his staff their yearly salary. That’s a pretty hefty amount if you ask us.

Along the way, there has been mention of additional outside consultants hired by the office. If so, how many throughout the year and how much does it cost taxpayers?

We’d like to understand better what this department does year round for the amount of money they are being paid and think it’s important to look into for the administrative costs used by grant money alone.

* Addendum: This thought process was inspired by today’s article in the Daily Freeman. You can read it HERE

9 thoughts on “Administrative Costs For Allocating Federal Funds in Midtown?”

  1. Gee, there so much that is not here, that I don’t know… Links to the grant, who got the grant, what is the grant for, links to Michael Murphy….
    If the author (no attribution) had/has this information, it would be helpful to post it.
    Off to look…
    thanks

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  2. I called Mr Murphy, head of Community Development for the city, and asked him, basically, the questons I posed in an email I sent to him:

    “Can you direct me to some links about the grant? I can think of a ton of questions but I figure this might be published that might answer them.”

    Mr Murphy told me the following:
    1) The information is on file in the clerks office and can be read there or purchased at $.25 a page, under Freedom of Information
    2) The information is not available electronically nor is it published to the internet.
    3) There is a public meeting April 7 for the Common Council to vote on. (This April 7 meeting and agenda is not on the city web site calendar, and there is no agenda posted). Then there is a 30 day review period. There will not be hard copy of the grant application at the meeting. Should we be getting this from our aldermen? on the yahoogoups sites?
    I can see that FOIL (freedom of information) is really a very important first step in the process of information to the citizen, but it is only the first step…
    Bottom line: all the information I have about the grant was in the above posting to the kingstoncitizens.org blog. If anyone has more or gets more information, post it here, please.

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  3. Yes. This thought process was inspired by this morning’s article in the Freeman. It has now been added to the blog post. Thanks, GB.

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  4. I have to agree with the author’s statement. My first thought was ” what is the administration costs and can we see a break down of that?” To have that much go to administration it begs the question,”can we do this smarter? or with less personnel if a good chunk goes to salaries.

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  5. I am not a member of the Community Dev. Committee but was at the meeting last week when the Council went over the grant applications. I asked Mr. Murphy what the ‘administrative costs’ were for since there was no further info. His reply was that it went towards the salaries for their department.
    I wish Rebecca luck in getting more detailed information. I would much rather see that grant money each year go towards programs that gets kids off the streets and rebuilds our crumbling infrastructure. How many grant writers do we need? (add up their salaries, you be the judge). $15,000 for cameras? Yes they are needed but could that particular money be put to better use? One week in midtown and they will most likely be destroyed anyway. How about getting the ones already in place up and working again?
    We (the Council) can only vote on the entire package for the grant money, not for the individual breakouts.
    BTW, the Council meeting is April 6th, not the 7th. 7:30pm, and this month both Party Leaders give their state of the City address.
    I hope to see you there, I have quite a bit to say.

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  6. Got very good information directly from Michael Murphy that will include a budget. Will post shortly.

    Rebecca

    Reply

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