A bill for an ordinance approving a proposed Intergovernmental Agreement between the City and County of Denver, through its Denver Human Services Department, and the Regional Transportation District, to provide eligibility determination and enrollment into RTD’s LiVE Program. Approves an intergovernmental agreement with the Regional Transportation District (RTD) for $1,835,299 and for five years for RTD to fund up to four Denver Human Services Eligibility Technician II’s, who will provide eligibility determination and enrollment into RTD’s LiVE Program, a fare discount program for low-income individuals, citywide (SOCSV-201950941). The last regularly scheduled Council meeting within the 30-day review period is on 8-12-19. The Committee approved filing this item at its meeting on 7-9-19.
Thank you, Madam Pro-Tem. My question is regarding the use of the almost $2 million to provide eligibility determination for our TDS live program. I just want to know a little bit more about how this $2 million is going to be spent. It seems like a pretty large amount to get people enrolled when your existing case managers might be able to be trained on how to do that. So is anybody here to perhaps explain? Thank you. If you wouldn't mind introducing yourself. It's not. Good evening, everyone. My name is Lorraine Archuleta. I'm the division director for Human Services, the Family and Adult Assistance Division. And the eligibility services fall under my purview. And so your question is a very good one. So we have approximately 244 eligibility technicians in our division. This program is new and it falls under seven jurisdictions within the metro region area. So it's not just determining eligibility for Denver Human Services in the Denver metro region. It's 46 other jurisdictions as well. So the $2 million is not just for this year, it's for five years. So it's a five year term for the contract. And so it's determining eligibility not just for the live program itself, but controlling for all of the other benefits that our clients may be eligible for. So I'm not sure if this statement of work was included in the figure and in the information that you guys received. But that's also included. We plan on determining other benefits, including in the live lab program. Does that help? So does that mean hiring new people? Does that mean some trainings? What does that look like? Julie So what is happening now is what we did is we took four experienced workers and we train them in this program because they are having to train in the peak pro system. That's the system that these applications are going through. So we have the peak online system. That's the state's eligibility system. This is a little bit of a different path that these applications go through on the back end. And so these technicians have to go through this system to retrieve the applications. So they had to be trained on that in all of the procedures for these for the program. So then we had to backfill the positions with new staff. Now, why the the current technicians cannot do this is they have to they are committed to other programs and other services. And so, as I stated, we have 244 eligibility technicians within our division. Our caseloads are approximately 120. We serve one in three in Denver Human Services. I'm sure you've heard that statistic before. And so we serve approximately 121,000 Medicaid recipients, approximately 44,000 SNAP recipients. And so, as such, you know, we have our technicians serving all of the other citizens that are receiving the other benefits. So we want to make sure that this new program was being launched and we did not disrupt the other services of our other citizens of Denver Human Services. And do you see this 2 million being renewed every five years, or do you see it as just a seed funding to get it off the ground? Well, it's not city funding or our TDs paying for that service. So as such, we're going to be meeting with RTD in 90 days to see the data and reevaluate. And then we'll be doing that every 90 days. Every 90 days will be doing that to ensure that all of that data. Yeah. I'm sorry. So I was saying seed funding, like to Sudan or. Yeah. I apologize. So, again, I will be meeting with RTD every 90 days to look at the data and look at the staffing to see are we on target? Did we overestimated? We underestimate. So I think as such, we're going to be ensuring that our. A did we again overestimate the funding? An underestimate because we don't know. We're unsure as to what the estimates are. Again, we're looking at seven jurisdictions, Denver, Jefferson, parts of Weld, Adams County, Arapahoe County, Boulder County. So we're looking at all these jurisdictions. We don't know how many people between the ages of 20 and 64 within these jurisdictions that meet these qualifications, that fall between the 185 FPL federal poverty level. Awesome. Thank you. I ask the questions just because I don't know if it's going to get we're going to get it again in five years. And then will our techs need more funding? So thank you. No, you're very welcome. Thank you, everyone. Thank you, Loraine. And thank you, Councilwoman CdeBaca. Or you all get on the questions. All right, great. Madame Secretary, please put the next item up on our screens. Councilman Flynn, what would you like us to do with 0581?