SANTA CRUZ >> The Santa Cruz City Council will receive an update regarding Collective of Results and Evidence-based Investments or CORE program and potentially codify two city ordinances following two second readings at its meeting Tuesday.

The upcoming meeting begins at 2 p.m. Tuesday with oral communications, or the portion of the meeting devoted to hearing the public’s concerns about items not on the agenda. Following the general public comment, the City Council will tackle its consent agenda and vote on two second readings of potential city ordinances.

One ordinance would prohibit government-sponsored unsanctioned transport of homeless persons to the city and was spurred by a recent incident where city officials said that a woman experiencing homelessness with an undisclosed disability was dropped off outside the Overlook shelter in DeLaveaga Park.

Another ordinance that will face a second vote of the City Council would finalize rental increase protections for tenants in units with expiring affordable housing rental restrictions. The ordinance came about when low-income tenants of the St. George Apartments in Santa Cruz voiced their concerns about substantial upcoming rental increases they were facing to the Santa Cruz City Council.

The City Council will later receive a staff report on the status of the CORE program and help guide the way that the limited funding is apportioned to community-minded organizations. The CORE program is an initiative that provides public funding to programs and organizations in the city and county that bolster the wellbeing of residents and is managed and funded by the Santa Cruz County Human Services Department in partnership with the city.

According to the item’s agenda report, the program has a total of about $6 million in funding available to invest with $4,879,000 from the county and $1,080,000 in funding provided by the city of Santa Cruz. With about $1.5 million of the funding already set aside for shelters with supportive services, and about $670,000 set aside for elected officials to address emerging needs, $3,790,025 is available for competitive funding to local organizations through the program’s request for proposals process.

A request for proposals was issued in June to organizations in the county hoping to receive a portion of the CORE funding with those proposals due in early August. The agenda report states that a total of 100 proposals were submitted by 75 organizations requesting approximately $15 million, which far exceeds the $3.8 million in funding that is available.

The agenda report states that more than 65 panelists representing a cross-section of county residents volunteered to review the 100 proposals. The panelists received training and a scoring matrix from Santa Cruz County Human Services Department to determine the recipients and all panelists signed a conflict-of-interest policy.

Before the final awards are made, the City Council is being asked to give direction whether to exclude any specific services or programs from the competitive awards and because the funding requested exceeds what is available, staff seeks direction whether to distribute funds proportionally based on the amount requested by each CORE tier designation or distribute funds based on the number of proposals submitted in each category.

The second option is recommended in the staff report, which states that about 22 to 40 proposals would be funded if the council chooses that direction.

Once direction is received from the City Council alongside the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors and the panelists complete their scoring of the proposals, applicants will be informed about their award status. Final award recommendations are slated to be heard by the City Council in November.