§ 118.912 — Review, Evaluation and Scoring of Applications by Committee

Sec. 118.912. - Review, Evaluation and Scoring of Applications by Committee.

(a) Scoring Committees; Deadline. The Committee may create a scoring subcommittee for each Funded Category and all grant applications belonging to such category shall be reviewed, scored and evaluated by said scoring subcommittee, provided however that no application shall be scored by fewer than five members of the Committee. Members may be assigned by the Chair to more than one scoring subcommittee established for a given Funded Category; however, the same group of members (five or more) assigned to a scoring subcommittee must score each application assigned to the subcommittee for review. If a member is unable to review, score and evaluate all of the applications assigned to a scoring subcommittee, the Chair shall assign a new member to replace such member. The score sheets for any application completed by any such replaced member shall not be used and the new assigned member shall independently review, evaluate and score the applications assigned to such scoring subcommittee. In the event that the Committee membership is less than seven members, all members of the Committee shall be required to score each grant application. Members shall review, score and evaluate applications and forward completed score sheets for each application to the Manager on or before October 1 of each year with the exception that the score sheets for the first round of grant applications for Fiscal Year 2026-2027 shall be completed and submitted to the Manager on or before November 1, 2026. (b) Scoring and Rankings. A score sheet containing the evaluation criteria, together with the maximum points assigned to each criterion pursuant to Section 118.912(c) below, shall be used to evaluate applications. Each member shall record the scores given to each criterion on the score sheet. The score sheet shall be retained by the Manager and made available for review as public record at such time that the scoring for all eligible applications is completed. City staff shall not score applications nor provide scoring suggestions to members of the Committee. The Manager shall rank each application belonging to a Funded Category from highest to lowest (e.g., first, second, third, etc.) based on the average of the scores contained on the score sheets for each application. Upon determining the average score for each application, the Manager shall discard any individual application score that is 20 points more or less than such average score and recalculate the average score for said application based on the remaining scores. An application must have an average score of 70 points or more to be awarded grant funds pursuant to this Part. The Committee shall establish a uniform procedure for breaking tied scores. (c) Evaluation Criteria. The Committee shall evaluate and score Sections 118.911(b)(3)—(8) of each Eastside Grants Program grant application based upon the following evaluation criteria and maximum assigned points to each criterion: (1) Quality of the program, service, project, or initiative (maximum 20 points); (2) Strength of staff and board (maximum 5 points); (3) Requesting organization's ability to administratively manage the program, service, project, or initiative and budget (maximum 10 points); (4) Need for the program, service, project, or initiative within the applicable Funded Category and the Eastside (maximum 10 points); (5) Quality and results of past performance by the requesting organization and/or the program, service, project, or initiative to be funded (maximum 10 points); (6) Impact of the program, service, project, or initiative on the applicable Funded Category and the Eastside (maximum 10 points); (7) Accuracy and appropriateness of the program, service, project, or initiative budget (maximum 15 points); (8) Ability of the requesting organization to perform and/or complete the program, service, project, or initiative, as applicable (maximum 15 points); and (9) Ability of the proposed measures to evaluate the effectiveness of the program, service, project, or initiative (maximum 5 points). (d) Tentative Adoption of Rankings by Committee. The Committee shall announce the rankings for each application belonging to a Funded Category at a meeting in the first full week of October of each year and adopt a tentative ranking and funding allocation list. For the Fiscal Year 2026-2027 grant cycle, the Committee shall announce the rankings for each application belonging to a Funded Category at a meeting in the first full week of November. Copies of each requesting organization's completed score sheets, together with any other supporting information or justification from the application scorer regarding the application score, shall be made available to requesting organizations after such meeting. A requesting organization will also be notified in writing by the Manager of its application score and ranking. A requesting organization may appeal a score sheet or ranking decision made pursuant to this Part through the appeals procedure set forth in Section 118.915.

(Ord. 2026-36-E, § 1)