Volunteers and board members from Special Delivery spoke before the HIV Planning Council May 28 to express concern over their organization being denied Ryan White CARE Act funding, which covers nearly 65 percent of their annual operating costs. The planning council was formed in 1990 to oversee and make recommendations about the distribution and allocation of funds through the county, specifically funds provided for through the Ryan White CARE Act.

Last July the planning council recommended that there be up to two meal delivery service providers receiving funds, and funding was allocated accordingly for the county to make grants through an RFP (request for proposal) process. Each year, services providers submit grant proposals, which are evaluated by a five-person source selection committee that then decides how the allocated money will be distributed. For the past ten years, both Mama’s Kitchen and Special Delivery have received a portion of these funds. However, this year Special Delivery’s proposal was turned down.

“I started cooking for people living with AIDS about 12 or 13 years ago,” Ruth Henricks, the executive director of Special Delivery told the HIV Planning Council May 28. “I’ve learned a lot and I was a quick study [as a cook]. I haven’t been quick studying as far as writing RFPs and saying the right things in the right way so people will … give us the right number of points, but that does not diminish my love for the HIV community….”

In regard to Special Delivery’s denial, close to 50 complaint forms were turned in to the planning council. The planning council falls under the HIV Consumer Council’s watchful eye, and they will be looking into what can be done to alleviate the concerns of Special Delivery’s clients, but the planning council’s hands may be tied for the time being.

“The role of the planning council as mandated by the federal government is to make service allocations of funding and to determine how each service category should be delivered,” Deborah Roseman, a county appointed member of the planning council staff, explained. “By federal mandate, the role of the planning council ends there and the planning council is prohibited from getting involved in which provider will provide the given service.”

St. Clair Adams, who is a member of the planning council, asked that the council send a message that it wants a second meal delivery service to be able to provide all of the services that the planning council requested.

“We’re not agency-specific but we are service-specific, and we set aside a certain amount of money in the spirit that there would be two providers,” Adams clarified. “Since we said that there should be two providers … if they didn’t meet the RFP because they didn’t qualify for what was being asked, then … we should continue to look and to try to replace that service, because that was our intent.”

Karen Waters-Montijo of the County Health and Human Services staff said that the exact wording of the recommendation was that there be a maximum of two meal delivery service providers, and that no minimum was set.

“When you say that the allocations are determined with the idea that there would be two providers,” Waters added, “we should be determining the need based on the need, not on the number of providers.”

Among the clients who receive food from Special Delivery are the homeless population, which is not provided for by Mama’s Kitchen. Currently, Special Delivery has a walk-in program for people who are homeless and can prove that they are HIV positive. They also deliver to the Center for Social Support and Education (CSSE), which serves the homeless HIV population.

“My main concern is my main clientele are homeless, and doing food is of essence,” El Bisarra, a case manager with CSSE, said at the planning council meeting. “We are very grateful that we have their meals delivered.… Please consider the homeless.… I have had 13 new clients this month and, guess what, Special Delivery fed them.”

Currently Special Delivery prepares meals for 150 clients a day, while Mama’s Kitchen handles upwards of 350 clients a day. While Special Delivery estimates that the homeless clientele make up approximately 25 percent of those they serve, Mama’s Kitchen executive director Alberto Cortes says that they are more than prepared to handle the influx of new clients if Special Delivery is not able to serve them. According to Cortes, Mama’s Kitchen been previously been getting about 60-70 percent of the Ryan White funding slated for meal deliveries, or almost 30 percent of the organization’s budget. This time Mama’s Kitchen was awarded 100 percent of the funds.

According to Cortes, Mama’s Kitchen has typically received $391,856 per year in Ryan White CARE Act funding for a 12-month period. This year’s grant application process was delayed, and will cover only nine months. The total amount available is $435,785. Cortes said Mama’s Kitchen applied for $349,830 of that.

Cortes, who is also one of two vice-chairs of the HIV Planning Council, said the county’s purchasing and contracting department makes the actual decision as to which organizations get money.

“There are a lot of us sitting on that planning council that have the potential for a conflict of interest,” said Cortes when asked whether a potential conflict of interest exists for him to serve as a co-chair of the planning council. “There are a lot of service providers there…. Christie’s Place is at the table, the [GLBT] Center is at the table, community clinics that receive Ryan White funding…. The comment that there is a conflict of interest is not true. I am not involved in any decision making on whether we get the funding or not.”

According to the planning council’s bylaws, no member of a service organization that benefits from its funding allocation can serve as the chair of the organization; Cortes avoids that conflict of interest by serving as a co-chair.

“The source selection committee is a county process,” Cortes added. “I had no input nor did I make any recommendations with regards to who served on the source selection committee for our application. That would have been a gross conflict of interest.”

Paul Nickerson, a procurement contracting officer for the County of San Diego, said, “We’re still in the review process and we haven’t made any awards…. Until we make an award, we really can’t talk about those issues….”

However, his supervisor, Winston McColl, director of purchasing and contracting for the county, said items that might be cause for declining an RFP could include that an organization’s “past performance is not good, their references don’t check out, they don’t have the technical expertise, they don’t have the business acumen, they don’t have the accounting tools and mechanisms in place, they don’t have the managerial or programmatic staff in place, [or] they do a lousy job on their proposal. A lot of times incumbents assume that because they have a contract and … they’re the incumbent, that that should be sufficient, that they don’t have to answer all the questions. Or if they do, they give a very short answer. We keep on telling these people they need to treat this as if you’re bidding on this for the first time and assume that the source selection committee members don’t know who you are.”

According to Henricks, the evaluation by the source selection committee read, “Special Delivery was not in a competitive range for an award…. While your proposal was a commendable effort with several positive aspects, there were several issues that would have been difficult to resolve without a considerable redevelopment effort.”

“We’ve had Ryan White contracts for 10 years,” said Henricks. “Every audit that they’ve ever done on us — sometimes it’s been as many as four a year — they will tell us the points that we aren’t in compliance with. Within the agreed amount of time, we have either come up into compliance or we have pointed out that we were in compliance and they overlooked it. But nevertheless, we were in compliance each time…. I mean, if we needed redevelopment, why wasn’t there a word about it in previous audits?”

Henricks estimates that she worked off and on for four weeks putting together the RFP and says that it was the most thorough one she has ever assembled. Upon being denied funds Henricks had a five-business day period in which she could have filed a protest against the decision. Henricks claims that she submitted the protest by fax on the fifth day, 10 minutes before the deadline, but according to the county, the fax was not received until 28 minutes after the deadline. Henricks blames the time difference on an incorrect time and date stamp on Special Delivery’s fax machine.

“To be honest with you, the first few days I was in a state of shock,” Henricks said. “I was in a state of shock because I did an excellent job on this grant.”

When filing a protest, Henricks had two options, she could either claim that the county had been remiss in their responsibility or that the source selection committee had done something wrong on their behalf.

“It’s very difficult to write a protest because it’s difficult to have anything fall into either one of those categories,” Henricks said, adding that she was, “alleging impropriety on the part of the evaluation team members on the source selection committee. It was my understanding that two home delivered meal services would be funded and this was not adhered to by the source selection committee.”

A meeting between Henricks and Nickerson has been tentatively scheduled for next week for a debriefing on why Special Delivery’s grant proposal was turned down. Special Delivery’s Ryan White funding from the county will cease on July 1 of this year, but Henricks assured the Times that Special Delivery will continue to serve its clientele even without the county funds, despite statements made at the planning council meeting that Mama’s Kitchen could absorb all of Special Delivery’s clients.

“They made it sound as though we are dead and buried and that there will be no more service from Special Delivery, and that is not the case,” Henricks said. “We have a very savvy board of directors, who over the course of time have set aside a reserved amount of money that we have not touched, for such a time as this — where some large amount of funding would disappear, whether it’s going to be permanent or temporary. We will continue to go on.”