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MARYLAND DEPARTMENT OF HUMAN SERVICES PRE-PROPOSAL CONFERENCE REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS RFP NUMBER SSA/RCC-19-001-S RESIDENTIAL CHILD CARE PROGRAMS THURSDAY, DECEMBER 5, 2019 10:30 A.M. Enoch Pratt Free Library Wheeler Auditorium 400 Cathedral Street Baltimore, Maryland PRESENT FROM MARYLAND DEPARTMENT OF HUMAN SERVICES: ARDENA M. WALKER, Program Manager Contracts and Monitoring Unit, SSA DEBBIE MARINI, Director, Placement and Permanency Social Services Administration DAVID AYER, Deputy Executive Director Operations, SSA KENNETH L. JESSUP, Program Manager, Hiring Agreements, Family Investment Administration ARETHA ECTOR, Assistant Attorney General SANDRA JOHNSON, Director of Procurement NIA GRAVES, Procurement Specialist RICHARD MASON, IV, Supervisor Contracts and Monitoring Unit, SSA PRESENT FROM MARYLAND DEPARTMENT OF HUMAN RESOURCES: SANG KANG, Procurement Officer ANDRE J. THOMAS, Program Manager Office of Licensing and Monitoring (OLM) HELEN MURRAY-MILLER, Quality Assurance/ Data Management, OLM REPORTED BY: DEBORAH B. GAUTHIER, Notary Public 2 1 P R O C E E D I N G S 2 MR. KANG: Good morning. Today is -- welcome 3to the pre-proposal conference for the Residential 4Child Care Programs RFP. My name is Sang Kang, and 5today we will be presenting information about the 6Request for Proposals, and we will also be trying to 7answer any questions that you may have about the RFP. 8If you have not already done so, please make sure that 9you sign in outside, and when you are signing in please 10indicate whether you are a Minority Business Enterprise 11or a Small Business Enterprise. 12 Please note that the court reporter will be 13transcribing the event, so when you ask questions, we 14are going to have a microphone go around. Just please 15make sure you state your name and your company for the 16record. The transcript of -- a transcript of this 17conference will be -- will be made available on 18eMaryland Marketplace Advantage and also the DHS 19website. So I'd like to begin the conference with 20introductions. We're going to have Henry and Danny go 21around with the mics so everybody can introduce HUNT REPORTING COMPANY Court Reporting and Litigation Support Serving Maryland, Washington, and Virginia 410-766-HUNT (4868) 1-800-950-DEPO (3376) 3 1themselves. I think -- I was expecting more people, so 2I think everybody can introduce themselves, so just 3please state your name and your organization, and, 4also, if you're an MBE or VSBE -- please let us know if 5you're an MBE or VSBE and you can give a description of 6the type of services that you provide. Okay. I guess 7we'll start over here. 8 MR. BERRY: Rufus Berry, DHS Procurement. 9 AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hi, I'm Jacqueline 10(indiscernible). 11 MR. JESSUP: Good morning. My name is 12Kenneth Jessup. I'm here as the Program Manager for 13Hiring Agreements Programs. 14 MS. ECTOR: Aretha Ector, Assistant Attorney 15General, DHS. 16 MS. JOHNSON: Sandy Johnson, Director of 17Procurement for DHS. 18 MR. CORNHEY: Simon Cornhey, Office of the 19Attorney General, DHS. 20 MS. WIMBISH: Sharone Wimbish, Contract 21Monitor, Social Services Administration. HUNT REPORTING COMPANY Court Reporting and Litigation Support Serving Maryland, Washington, and Virginia 410-766-HUNT (4868) 1-800-950-DEPO (3376) 4 1 MS. ROSETTE: Londa Rosette, Contract 2Monitor, SSA. 3 MS. DUNN: Beatrice Dunn, Gibbs Place, LLC. 4 MR. MADDEN: Nathaniel Madden, SSA 5Operations. 6 MS. KOLLEH: Christie Kolleh, Program 7Manager, Community Options. 8 MS. PEREZ: Chloe Perez, Hearts and Homes for 9Youth. 10 MR. CLEMENT: Paul Clement, Hearts and Homes 11for Youth. 12 MS. HAYES: Hi. I'm Melanie Geddings Hayes, 13Hearts and Homes for Youth. 14 MS. TETREAULT: Hi. I'm Kathryn Tetreault 15with (indiscernible). 16 MR. BUCHDAHL: Ezra Buchdahl, Catholic 17Charities, St. Vincent's Villa. 18 MR. MASON: Richard Mason, Social Services 19Administration, Contracts and Monitoring Supervisor. 20 MR. EDUFUL: Samuel Eduful, Contracts and 21Monitoring, DHS. HUNT REPORTING COMPANY Court Reporting and Litigation Support Serving Maryland, Washington, and Virginia 410-766-HUNT (4868) 1-800-950-DEPO (3376) 5 1 MS. FROST: Shilda Frost, Second Family. 2 MS. THOMAS: Dovia Thomas, Second Family. 3 MR. LABULE: Joseph Labule, Second Family. 4 MR. FLEMMONS: David Flemmons, Second Family. 5 AUDIENCE MEMBER: Aquan (indiscernible). 6 MS. EBY: Hi. I'm Beth Eby, COO of Creative 7Options. 8 MS. CARTER: Pamela Carter (indiscernible). 9 MR. DOKA: Mohammed Doka, NCCF. 10 MR. OKHOMINA: Omore Okhomina, National 11Center for Children and Families. 12 AUDIENCE MEMBER: (Indiscernible). 13 MR. TEASLEY: Isaiah Teasley, Program 14Director, Bridgeway. 15 MS. BRITT: Elizabeth Britt from Britt's 16Industries. I'm an MBE and I'm certified for 17commercial printing. 18 MR. FORD: John Ford with the Arc of 19Washington County, Incorporated in Hagerstown. 20 MR. DINGLE: Good morning. Zachary Dingle, 21Executive Director of Jumoke. HUNT REPORTING COMPANY Court Reporting and Litigation Support Serving Maryland, Washington, and Virginia 410-766-HUNT (4868) 1-800-950-DEPO (3376) 6 1 MS. MCGLOTHLIN-RENAULT: Jennifer McGlothlin- 2Renault, Arrow Child and Family Ministries, Vice 3President of Maryland Operations. 4 MR. BASLER: Robert Basler, Arrow Child and 5Family Ministries. 6 MR. PRUETT: Jay Pruett, Arrow Child and 7Family Ministries. 8 MS. RIDGLEY: Nikeya Ridgley, Ardmore 9Enterprises. 10 MS. POWELL: Karen Powell, Maryland State 11Department of Education. 12 MR. HUBNER: Louis Hubner, Controller at The 13Children's Guild. 14 MS. FRIES: Allisa Fries, Children's Guild. 15 MS. FURMAN: Janet Furman, Department of 16Health, Developmental Disabilities Administration. 17 MS. ANDERSON: Lisa Anderson with the 18Children's Guild. 19 MR. HOWE: Steve Howe with Children's Guild. 20 MR. MCNEIL: Walter McNeil, Challengers 21Independent Living. HUNT REPORTING COMPANY Court Reporting and Litigation Support Serving Maryland, Washington, and Virginia 410-766-HUNT (4868) 1-800-950-DEPO (3376) 7 1 MR. BAIRD: Bobby Baird, Board of Child Care. 2 MS. SMITH: Good morning. Nicole Smith, 3Board of Child Care. 4 MS. BERGER: Kelly Berger, Board of Child 5Care. 6 MS. JOHNSON: Danielle Johnson, Inner County 7Outreach. 8 MR. COOPER: Andre Cooper, The Children's 9Home. 10 MS. REID: Nicky Reid, The Children's Home. 11 MS. LUCAS: Yvette Lucas, The Children's 12Home. 13 MS. SHATZER: Paula Shatzer, Cedar Ridge 14Children's Home. 15 MR. BADLEY: Tom Badley, Cedar Ridge. 16 AUDIENCE MEMBER: (Indiscernible) Central 17Office, Procurement Supervisor. 18 MR. THOMAS: Andre Thomas, DHS, Office of 19Licensing and Monitoring. 20 AUDIENCE MEMBER: (Indiscernible) DHS, Office 21of Licensing and Monitoring. HUNT REPORTING COMPANY Court Reporting and Litigation Support Serving Maryland, Washington, and Virginia 410-766-HUNT (4868) 1-800-950-DEPO (3376) 8 1 MS. BULLUCK: Odetta Bulluck, Office of 2Licensing and Monitoring. 3 MR. OYEFUSI: Good morning. Tunji Oyefusi, 4Innovative Services. 5 MR. MCCOURT: Paul McCourt, Innovative 6Services. 7 MS. MCCABE: Jennifer McCabe, Office of 8Licensing and Monitoring. 9 MS. MURRAY-MILLER: Helen Murray-Miller, 10Office of Licensing and Monitoring. 11 MS. SPARROW: Patricia Sparrow, Office of 12Licensing and Monitoring. 13 MS. JARVIS: Kisah Jarvis, Office of 14Licensing and Monitoring. 15 MS. CHAPMAN: Sheryl Brissett Chapman, The 16National Center for Children and Families. 17 MR. AYER: Hi, everyone. David Ayer, Social 18Services Administration. 19 MS. MARINI: Good morning, everyone. Debbie 20Marini, Director of Placement and Permanency, SSA. 21 MS. WALKER: Ardena Walker, Program Monitor, HUNT REPORTING COMPANY Court Reporting and Litigation Support Serving Maryland, Washington, and Virginia 410-766-HUNT (4868) 1-800-950-DEPO (3376) 9 1SSA Contracts and Monitoring. 2 MR. KANG: Okay. Thank you. Today to make 3opening remarks is David Ayer, who is Deputy Executive 4Director of SSA. 5 (Whereupon, there were comments off the 6record.) 7 MR. AYER: Welcome, everyone. Welcome to our 8providers and various State representatives. Really 9glad to have the group together today. I don't think 10anyone's arrived mistakenly to this pre-proposal 11conference for the RCC's RFP. 12 I wanted to just briefly review that we're 13focusing on several kinds of placement services that we 14very much need to have for our foster children; group 15homes, high intensity group homes, therapeutic group 16home programs. We have programs for the 17developmentally disabled; we have diagnostic evaluation 18and treatment programs, as well as some recent 19additions over the last year, year-and-a-half, two 20years maybe, the high intensity group home services 21that are serving the commercially sexually exploited, HUNT REPORTING COMPANY Court Reporting and Litigation Support Serving Maryland, Washington, and Virginia 410-766-HUNT (4868) 1-800-950-DEPO (3376) 10 1as well as those with emotional and cognitive 2developmental disabilities. And so we have a broad 3range of needs that continue to need to be met as we 4move forward. We have, as you know and as reflected 5somewhat in the RFP, itself, some core principles that 6we're espousing and trying harder and harder with, 7through our own efforts and, obviously, through 8emphasis of our federal partners, on placing only when 9necessary in these special kinds of placement services 10so that we have the right services being matched to the 11needs of the children for whom they're designed. You 12know, we're shifting as we go along, paying more 13attention to trauma-informed services, family 14involvement, as we continue to work with these children 15and youth, even though they're in group home kinds of 16settings, and being as community-based as we can be -- 17well, actually, very community-based in all the other 18facets of the lives of children who live in the homes. 19 I'll also just make a brief pitch for what's 20to come, in terms of modernization. A lot of my time 21lately has been focused on modernizing information HUNT REPORTING COMPANY Court Reporting and Litigation Support Serving Maryland, Washington, and Virginia 410-766-HUNT (4868) 1-800-950-DEPO (3376) 11 1systems and we do envision a future. I can't say I 2have it in hand right this very moment, but always 3having the hope of reaching this vision of being able 4to have a decent kind of collaboration and data sharing 5be able to take place between the providers and the 6State agency, the Social Services Administration, in 7relation to serving our children and our families. And 8there are the beginnings of a portal that we're going 9to -- a portal that is being developed and will provide 10a conduit for us to have various kinds of exchanges and 11data sharing that will be appropriate to serving the 12needs of the children and families that we have. So, 13like I said, it's not quite entirely in hand just yet, 14but we're going to continue to aim for that as we go 15along. 16 This RFP was issued on November 4th, and it 17will be -- proposals will be due by two o'clock on 18February 6th, 2020, next year. A lot of questions have 19been received and are being answered, and the 20clarifications will continue to be made, particularly 21following feedback and questions from today's meeting. HUNT REPORTING COMPANY Court Reporting and Litigation Support Serving Maryland, Washington, and Virginia 410-766-HUNT (4868) 1-800-950-DEPO (3376) 12 1And so I really wanted to welcome you again. Thank you 2so much for serving the children with all the love, 3care, and, very importantly, the expertise and 4professional services that you provide for each of 5these children and that each of these children deserve 6as they move through their lives. And so we're very 7appreciative of all the efforts that you and the folks 8that you hire to help take care of these children and 9help them thrive as they go through this what's 10supposed to be a temporary experience of foster care 11and we all work together to try to achieve that for 12these children. So without further ado, the next part 13would be to hand over to Sang, and thank you -- thank 14you again. And I'll send this back over here. 15 MR. KANG: Thank you, David. Okay. Now I 16will present Section 1 of the RFP. I know the agenda 17states that we are going to have two sets of questions, 18but we're just going to hold off questions till the end 19and we're going to go through each section of the RFP 20first. 21 So Section 1 is Offeror Minimum HUNT REPORTING COMPANY Court Reporting and Litigation Support Serving Maryland, Washington, and Virginia 410-766-HUNT (4868) 1-800-950-DEPO (3376) 13 1Qualifications, and I'll go quickly. For the following 2programs, Developmentally Disabled, Diagnostic 3Evaluation and Treatment Program, Group Home, High 4Intensity Group Home, Therapeutic Group Home, and 5Medically Fragile, you must be in good standing with 6the appropriate licensing agency and have a current, 7valid Maryland license to provide residential child 8care services. As proof of meeting this requirement, 9you need to submit a copy of the current license with 10your proposal. 11 For High Intensity Group Home Services- 12Commercially Sexually Exploited and High Intensity 13Group Home Services-Emotional and Cognitive 14Developmentally Disabled, the Offeror needs to have a 15Maryland license to provide these services by the time 16of recommendation for award, and you need to submit a 17copy of a Letter of Intent to OLM expressing interest 18in obtaining a license to provide either CSE or ECDD 19services. 20 So we have one preferred qualification for 21this RFP, and I know that there are some questions HUNT REPORTING COMPANY Court Reporting and Litigation Support Serving Maryland, Washington, and Virginia 410-766-HUNT (4868) 1-800-950-DEPO (3376) 14 1about it, but just please wait till the end and we'll 2try to answer them. The preferred qualification is to 3be accredited as a Qualified Residential Treatment 4Program or QRTP, and you would have to be certified or 5accredited by any of the following three bodies, which 6are Council on Accreditation, Commission on 7Accreditation of Rehabilitation Facilities, and the 8Joint Commission on Accreditation on Health Care 9Organizations, so -- and if you have that 10accreditation, please submit it with your Proposal. 11And so those are the minimum and preferred 12qualifications for this RFP. To present the Scope of 13Work will be Ardena Walker, who is the Program Manager 14at SSA. Ardena. 15 (Whereupon, there were comments off the 16record.) 17 MS. WALKER: Good morning. Okay. Contractor 18Requirements: Scope of Work. Sang just went through 19the programs that were -- that this Proposal is for. 20Technical Proposals must be submitted in accordance 21with Section 5.3 of your RFP. All services provided to HUNT REPORTING COMPANY Court Reporting and Litigation Support Serving Maryland, Washington, and Virginia 410-766-HUNT (4868) 1-800-950-DEPO (3376) 15 1the children shall be provided in the IRC budget/rate. 2The Department will also only pay for the rate 3established by the IRC. Offerors can -- directly or 4through its subcontractors must be able to provide all 5goods and services and meet all of the requirements. A 6contract award with the State does not insure any State 7business. 8 For the Background and Scope (sic), DHS 9oversees the administration of Child Welfare Services 10in the State of Maryland. Also under the Scope, the 11focus of Place Matters and the Families First 12Prevention Services Act is to shift the foster care 13population in the family settings. The Department 14intends to enter into performance-based contracts with 15multiple RCC providers, and the geographical areas are 16on page five of your RFP. If you don't have the RFP, 17it would be the Southern Maryland region, Central 18Maryland, Western Maryland, D.C. Metro, Eastern Shore, 19and Baltimore City. Baltimore City is considered a 20part of the Central region. 21 Services provided by RCC programs must be HUNT REPORTING COMPANY Court Reporting and Litigation Support Serving Maryland, Washington, and Virginia 410-766-HUNT (4868) 1-800-950-DEPO (3376) 16 1appropriate to the age, gender, sexual orientation, 2cultural heritage, and the developmental and functional 3level of children. Sang went through the eight program 4categories that this solicitation is intended to 5solicit providers for. Those, again, are the 6Developmentally Disabled Program; the Diagnostic 7Evaluation and Treatment Program; the Group Home 8Program; High Intensity Group Home Program; Therapeutic 9Group Home Program; Medically Fragile; High Intensity 10Group Home Services for Commercially Sexually 11Exploited; High Intensity Group Home Program Services- 12Emotional and Cognitive Developmentally Disabled. 13 The Department intends to award a number of 14contracts as may be necessary to meet the projected 15number of beds needed for each program, taking into 16consideration the gender and age of the children in a 17geographical region. The chart -- there's a chart on 18page seven of the RFP that describes the estimated 19Department needs for RCC services per program. And 20please note that the number of beds in the chart may 21change. And the chart that I'm referencing is figure HUNT REPORTING COMPANY Court Reporting and Litigation Support Serving Maryland, Washington, and Virginia 410-766-HUNT (4868) 1-800-950-DEPO (3376) 17 1four on page seven. The Department can also not make 2any promises about referrals or the number of referrals 3that any provider will receive. Technical factors will 4be given greater weight than the Financial factors. 5 Under General Requirements, Contractors must 6possess and maintain a current, valid Maryland RCC 7license and remain in good standing with the 8appropriate licensing agencies, and those agencies are 9listed in Section 2.2.10 of the RFP. The RCC must 10operate in the State of Maryland. It must be open 24 11hours a day, 365 days per year, and have 24-hour awake 12overnight staff. The RCC must comply with all 13applicable State and federal laws, regulations, DHS 14policies, standards, and guidelines, and also remain 15abreast of and comply with any current and new or 16revised laws, regulations, or DHS policies. 17 The Contractor must also maintain a policy 18and procedures manual describing in detail your 19philosophy and your approach to care and delivery, and 20it also must include the Maryland DHS IPM and Ready by 2121 initiatives. The RCC must comply with the Scope of HUNT REPORTING COMPANY Court Reporting and Litigation Support Serving Maryland, Washington, and Virginia 410-766-HUNT (4868) 1-800-950-DEPO (3376) 18 1Work. It must develop a Behavior Management Plan that 2employs positive behavior interventions. It must also 3plan, facilitate, and coordinate all preventive, 4routine, and emergency medical, mental health, and 5dental care services; arrange for and insure that each 6child -- each school-age resident attends an 7educational or vocational program; insure that the 8Program's residential care workers are certified by the 9State Board for the Certification of Residential Child 10Care Program Professionals. 11 Under Staffing, you must maintain a Board of 12Directors, employ a significant number of RCYCPs, and, 13again, that's an acronym that's kind of new to me as 14well, but that would be Residential Child Care Program 15Professionals. Identify the Certified Program 16Administrator who is considered under this solicitation 17to be Key Personnel. For QRTP providers, identify 18registered or licensed nursing and clinical staff who 19provide care within the scope of the practice, and they 20would be considered Key Personnel. Based on the level 21of care, insure that there are at least two persons, HUNT REPORTING COMPANY Court Reporting and Litigation Support Serving Maryland, Washington, and Virginia 410-766-HUNT (4868) 1-800-950-DEPO (3376) 19 1excluding volunteers and staff not providing direct 2care and supervision, present and on duty in the 3facility at all times when a resident is present in the 4facility. And I want to just make the note, because 5there's been I think one set of questions published, 6that the requirement that at least two staff persons be 7present and on duty in the facility at all times 8applies even if the -- if there are more staff present 9and on duty at the facility than otherwise required by 10the minimum resident to staff ratios provided. You 11need to insure that staff receives appropriate 12orientation and ongoing training, and that means insure 13that all staff receive 40 hours of initial and 40 hours 14of annual training, and that you maintain training 15records, including the names and credentials of 16trainers. 17 And under Cultural and Linguistic Competence, 18Contractors shall insure that all staff persons who 19come in contact with the child are aware of and 20sensitive to the child's cultural, ethnic, and 21linguistic differences, which may include -- or which HUNT REPORTING COMPANY Court Reporting and Litigation Support Serving Maryland, Washington, and Virginia 410-766-HUNT (4868) 1-800-950-DEPO (3376) 20 1does include hearing-impaired children. All costs for 2these services shall be included in your IRC rate. 3 The Intake and Admission, accept all 4referrals 24 hours a day, seven days a week, that are 5made in accordance with the provider's profile; have a 6no reject policy on the identified needs in the RFP; 7insure that children reside in quarters with persons of 8their own age groups, and the suggested age groups are 914 through 17 and 18 through 21. 10 For providers who have multiple site 11locations, as it relates to moving children, children 12shall not move -- Contractors shall not move a child to 13another site location without prior written notice to 14and written consent from the local case worker, and 15that notice can be given via fax, mail, e-mail, or 16hand-delivery to the local case worker of your intent, 17and that's within at least 30 calendar days before the 18move occurs. You should proceed, however, with an 19emergency move and then immediately let the case worker 20know or the on-call staff. The Contractor shall 21participate in all local Family Involved Meetings, HUNT REPORTING COMPANY Court Reporting and Litigation Support Serving Maryland, Washington, and Virginia 410-766-HUNT (4868) 1-800-950-DEPO (3376) 21 1reviews, and court hearings pertaining to case 2planning, treatment, placement setting, permanency, and 3family resources to include, at a minimum, all ISP 4reviews. 5 Visitation and Transportation, you are to 6insure and facilitate family -- regular family and 7sibling visitation; provide transportation to children 8to all medical and mental health appointments, 9school/educational extracurricular and vocational 10activities, recreational activities, and community 11activities. 12 For Staff Security, Contractors should insure 13that all staff, including all employees, consultants, 14subcontractors, are cleared through the Child 15Protection Registry and that the background checks 16include the jurisdictions in which the staff member 17resides prior to beginning work. 18 There's a mandatory incident requirement, and 19those requirements are under 2.3.12 of the RFP, and 20you're to follow the procedures for mandatory reporting 21of incidents. Report any alleged child abuse, neglect, HUNT REPORTING COMPANY Court Reporting and Litigation Support Serving Maryland, Washington, and Virginia 410-766-HUNT (4868) 1-800-950-DEPO (3376) 22 1or other risk to residents to the local case worker, 2Child Protective Services, DHS OLM, SSA Resource 3Development, and MDH/OHCQ via the DHS OLM Incident 4Report Form. Failure to report shall be sufficient 5cause to restrict or suspend placement of the 6Contractor. 7 Under Normal Daily Routines, Contractors 8shall insure a structured routine and schedule of 9events and activities. And under Community 10Integration, make community resources available and 11encourage participation; insure that every child has an 12opportunity to participate in religious services of his 13or her choice or to refrain if it's so desired; insure 14that any gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, and 15questioning children be linked with organizations. 16 Under Education, enroll the child in the 17locally zoned school serving the geographic attendance 18area; initiate and monitor the transfer of academic 19records; attend a meeting with appropriate school 20personnel at the time of enrollment and at any other 21time upon request. HUNT REPORTING COMPANY Court Reporting and Litigation Support Serving Maryland, Washington, and Virginia 410-766-HUNT (4868) 1-800-950-DEPO (3376) 23 1 Demonstrate compliance with the Bill of 2Rights for Maryland's Children. Ready by 21, align 3your practice and principles and core values with Ready 4by 21. 5 Under Discharge, provide, in the absence of 6extenuating circumstances, prior to any and all 7discharges, 30 day's calendar notice and a Discharge 8Plan. 9 For Recordkeeping, comply with all processes 10and requests made by the SSA Contracts and Monitoring 11Unit. Specific requirements for Contractor's providing 12services to Qualified Residential Treatment Programs, 13which is your QRTP, that's in Section 2.3.21. 14 For Contractors providing DD services, you 15will use the minimum -- the following minimum LOI 16standards, and that's under Section 2.3.22.1, and it 17must also have a MSDE-approved Type III school or 18utilize the local school systems and serve male and 19female youths ages 14 through 20. 20 For DETP Contractors, there are minimum LOI 21standards, and that's on page 19, and that's under HUNT REPORTING COMPANY Court Reporting and Litigation Support Serving Maryland, Washington, and Virginia 410-766-HUNT (4868) 1-800-950-DEPO (3376) 24 12.3.22.2, and, for that program type, serve male and 2female youth ages five through 20. The staffing ratio 3is listed under letter "H" for DETP Programs, and that 4would be three to one during waking hours and eight to 5one during sleeping hours. 6 For Contractors providing Group Home, you're 7required to have a 24-hour awake overnight and the 8minimum LOI standards are under 2.3.22.3, Letter "B", 9and that program will serve male and female youth ages 1014 through 20. The staffing ratio is four point (sic) 11one during waking hours, eight point (sic) -- I'm sorry 12-- eight through -- eight to one during sleeping hours. 13 For providers for High Group Home Programs, 14following the LOI standards under 2.3.22.4; serve an 15age group for males and females ages 14 through 20; 16staffing ratio is three point (sic) -- I'm sorry -- 17three to two during waking hours and eight to one 18during sleeping hours. 19 For Contractors for Therapeutic Group Home 20Programs, you're to follow the LOI standards under 212.3.22.5. The program is serving males and females HUNT REPORTING COMPANY Court Reporting and Litigation Support Serving Maryland, Washington, and Virginia 410-766-HUNT (4868) 1-800-950-DEPO (3376) 25 1ages 14 through 20. The staffing ratio is three to two 2during waking hours and eight to one during sleeping 3hours. 4 For Medically Fragile Programs, following the 5minimum LOI standards, and that's under 2.3.22.6. This 6program is serving youth, male and female, ages 14 7through 20. Staffing ratio is three to one during 8waking hours and eight to one during sleeping hours. 9 For Contractors providing HIGH-CSE, 10Contractors shall house and care for no more than four 11children in this population in one setting with one 12youth per bedroom. The LOI standards are under 132.3.22.7. Staffing ratio is one to two during waking 14hours, eight to one during sleeping hours. 15 For Contractors providing HIGH-ECDD, the LOI 16standards are under 2.3.22.8. That serves male, 17female, and/or transgendered children ages 14 to 20. 18You must have a facility for male, female, and 19transgendered youth ages 14 through 20. Staff ratio is 20one to two during waking hours, eight to one during 21sleeping hours. HUNT REPORTING COMPANY Court Reporting and Litigation Support Serving Maryland, Washington, and Virginia 410-766-HUNT (4868) 1-800-950-DEPO (3376) 26 1 Under the RCC Performance Requirements, the 2performance measures for each RCC Program category will 3be compiled, monitored, and rated four times each 4contract year, after the third, sixth, ninth, and 5twelfth month. There's a chart under Section 2.2.25 6that lays that out. All Offerors awarded a Contract 7will be monitored by DHS for performance measures, 8weighted, and that's under Chart A. That would be on 9your page 25, and that's under Section 2.3.23; it's 10letter "C", and the chart under it is "A", and it 11basically lays out the indicators for your child safety 12and the percentage, licensing and monitoring and the 13percentage, child well-being and the percentage, and 14the incentive points for child stability and 15permanency. Under RCC Performance Requirements are 16also your licensing and monitoring and the details 17behind that; the child safety, child well-being, child 18stability and permanency, and then there are subsequent 19charts, and those would be on -- you would find in your 20RFP under page 28. 21 Corrective Action Plans. At any given three- HUNT REPORTING COMPANY Court Reporting and Litigation Support Serving Maryland, Washington, and Virginia 410-766-HUNT (4868) 1-800-950-DEPO (3376) 27 1month rating period, Contractors who perform -- whose 2performance scores fall below the minimum standard will 3be required to submit a Corrective Action Plan, and the 4details behind that are under 2.3.27. There's also a 5performance report used for the contract award and the 6performance measures outlined in Section 2.3.29 will be 7used as part of the evaluation of these Proposals for 8awarding Contracts. 9 Again, I believe I stated that the Technical 10will have more weight than the Financial. For Contract 11award, the performance measures are weighted, as shown, 12and there's a chart under 2.3.30; that's on page 33, so 13that gives percentages of the weighting. 14 There will also be deliverables and there's a 15deliverables acceptance requirement, a description of 16the deliverables, and that's the end of Section 2. 17Let's move to Section 3, and I'm just going to skim 18through those because these are your General Contractor 19Requirements, and so they begin on page 39, and so just 20know that I'm not really going to read all of this to 21you or get into the details, but there is an end of HUNT REPORTING COMPANY Court Reporting and Litigation Support Serving Maryland, Washington, and Virginia 410-766-HUNT (4868) 1-800-950-DEPO (3376) 28 1contract transition. There's also invoicing -- general 2invoicing and about payments. There's travel 3reimbursement. Your insurance requirements, that's 4under 3.6. Criminal background checks, and that's 5under Section 3.71. All staff, including employees, 6Board members, consultants, subcontractors, must be 7cleared through the Child Protection Registry. 8 There's your Information Technology, your 9Security Incident Responses. And the Contractor shall 10notify the Department within 24 hours and it talks 11about data breaching, problem escalation procedures. 12And for your Technical Proposals, your personnel 13experience must be noted for your Project Manager, for 14your RCYCPs, and the RCYCPs must be certified by the 15State Board for the certification of Child -- of 16Residential Child Care Programs, and that's under 17Section 3.10.2. 18 Your Key Personnel is your Certified Program 19Administrator, and for QRTPs, that's going to be your 20licensed nursing and clinical staff. There's a section 21in here about Substitution of Personnel, and that's HUNT REPORTING COMPANY Court Reporting and Litigation Support Serving Maryland, Washington, and Virginia 410-766-HUNT (4868) 1-800-950-DEPO (3376) 29 1under 3.11. I'm not really feeling good about 2mentioning this, but there is an MBE requirement on 3this Proposal. That's under 3.12. And also a 4Veteran's Small Business Enterprise requirement of one 5percent, and that would be General Requirements under 6Section 3. Thank you. 7 MR. KANG: Thank you, Ardena. Okay. So I 8will present Sections -- Section 4, 5, and 6, and, at a 9later point, Nia and Kenneth will present Living Wage 10and Hiring Agreements. Let's see here. So I'd like to 11begin with Section 4.2. It's about eMaryland 12Marketplace Advantage. And since it's necessary to be 13registered with eMaryland Marketplace Advantage, I'm 14going to ask that everyone -- all Offerors register 15with the new eMMA system. And if you've already 16registered, please make sure that you sign up for the 17Foster Care -- I'm sorry -- Foster Home Care Services 18and Orphanage commodity code, and you can contact me 19about that. I saw that some of you were signed up on 20the new system, but not for that commodity code. 21 Okay. Questions. Please send all questions HUNT REPORTING COMPANY Court Reporting and Litigation Support Serving Maryland, Washington, and Virginia 410-766-HUNT (4868) 1-800-950-DEPO (3376) 30 1in writing. We have already sent out one question and 2response document and so I'll gather all the questions, 3and we're in the process of sending out a second one. 4 Proposal due date and time. Proposals are 5due February 6th, 2020 at two p.m. And I will go into 6more detail about this later, but we want the Technical 7Proposal -- it is preferred that the Technical Proposal 8be sent through Citrix ShareFile, but if you don't want 9to use Citrix, that's okay; just contact me and I will 10-- or just let me know and -- but you have to send in 11one original and five copies. 12 Financial Proposal. There's only one way to 13send the Financial Proposal, and you have to send that 14directly to me -- directly to Department of Human 15Services. So the Financial Proposal should not be sent 16through the Citrix system. 17 Okay. Multiple or Alternate Proposals. I 18just want to note that multiple or alternate Proposals 19will not be accepted, but you are sending a separate 20Proposal for each program that you actually -- you're 21applying for. So if you're applying for HUNT REPORTING COMPANY Court Reporting and Litigation Support Serving Maryland, Washington, and Virginia 410-766-HUNT (4868) 1-800-950-DEPO (3376) 31 1Developmentally Disabled and DETP, that's two separate 2Proposals -- Technical Proposals you have to send to 3us. Section 4.7, Economy of Preparation. Please try 4to make your Proposals straightforward and concise. 5 Okay. Award Basis. I'm going to skip a few 6cases here and there. Award Basis. Please note that 7this is an RFP and that you're going to be ranked first 8technically, and then you're going to be ranked 9financially, based on your provider rate letters, and 10then you're going to be given an overall ranking. 11There will be an overall ranking given for each 12geographical location within a given program, so you 13can -- Offerors may receive an award for more than one 14geographical location and you can also receive an award 15for more than one program. 16 Oral Presentations. There will be oral 17presentations, and the oral presentations then become a 18part of the Technical Proposal. Any substantive 19material, whether that had to be from the writing, and 20that becomes part of your Proposal. I will notify you 21of the time and place of the oral presentations. HUNT REPORTING COMPANY Court Reporting and Litigation Support Serving Maryland, Washington, and Virginia 410-766-HUNT (4868) 1-800-950-DEPO (3376) 32 1 Revisions to the RFP. Please -- I already 2sent out three amendments and one question and response 3document, so you should've received those. Please on 4the lookout for amendments. I've also been sending all 5the amendments and the questions and responses to our 6list of e-mails. If you want to get on that list, just 7contact me and I'll put you on that list so that you 8receive all the addenda. 9 Okay. I'm going to skip ahead here. 10Proposal Affidavits. There are certain affidavits that 11you have to submit with the Proposal. One is the 12Proposal Affidavit. The Contract Affidavit you send 13after you are given an award. I'm at Section 4.21. 14Please register with SDAT, which is the State 15Department of Assessments and Taxation. You need to 16have -- you need to be registered in order to get an 17award. 18 Okay. So I'll present the MBE portion of 19this RFP. There is a five percent MBE goal. That's 20Minority Business Enterprise, and that's only for those 21Offerors that are proposing 25 or more beds. The MBE HUNT REPORTING COMPANY Court Reporting and Litigation Support Serving Maryland, Washington, and Virginia 410-766-HUNT (4868) 1-800-950-DEPO (3376) 33 1Program, we -- at the State, we believe that is an 2important initiative, and we want our contractors to 3work with Minority Business Enterprise companies. So 4you are supposed to contact your MBEs prior to 5submitting a Proposal, and you're supposed to give us 6then what's called an MBE Utilization and Fair 7Solicitation Affidavit. That's Attachment D-1A. And 8in that attachment you are essentially saying that 9we're going to meet our MBE goal by subcontracting with 10these companies, so -- and it's very important that you 11send that D-1A, and it's very important that you reach 12out to the contractors -- or subcontractors prior to 13submitting a Proposal. You need to do that for each 14Proposal that you're submitting, so if you're 15submitting for more than one program, that means you 16will be sending us a separate Attachment D-1A for each 17Technical Proposal, each program. Okay. The other MBE 18documents will be due upon award. 19 All right. VSBE Goal. There is a one 20percent goal for Veteran-Owned Small Businesses, and 21regardless of how many beds you're providing there's a HUNT REPORTING COMPANY Court Reporting and Litigation Support Serving Maryland, Washington, and Virginia 410-766-HUNT (4868) 1-800-950-DEPO (3376) 34 1one percent goal. And, again, as with the MBE goal, 2you are required to solicit your VSBE companies and 3then give us an attachment. It's E-1. It's called the 4VSBE Utilization Affidavit and Prime/Subcontractor 5Participation Schedule, but it's Attachment E-1, and in 6that attachment you're saying that you're going to work 7with these VSBEs to meet the goal, so -- and, again, 8you have to submit one of those for each program that 9you're applying for, which would be a separate 10Technical Proposal. I'm sorry. Okay. So the other 11VSBE documents are due upon award. It's very important 12that you send your MBE and VSBE documents on time, and 13if you need help with them, just contact me by phone or 14e-mail. 15 Okay. So for Living Wage, Nia Graves will 16present the Living Wage portion of this RFP. 17 MS. GRAVES: Hello, everyone. All right. So 18the Living Wage law requires certain contractors and 19some subcontractors to pay minimum wage rates to 20employees working under certain State services 21contracts -- volume contracts valued at $100,000 or HUNT REPORTING COMPANY Court Reporting and Litigation Support Serving Maryland, Washington, and Virginia 410-766-HUNT (4868) 1-800-950-DEPO (3376) 35 1more. So effective as of September 28th, 2019, 2contractors and subcontractors subject to the Living 3Wage law must pay each covered employee at least $14.24 4per hour if State contract services valued at 50 5percent or more of the total value of the contract are 6performed in the Tier 1 area. And the Tier 1 are 7includes Anne Arundel County, Baltimore City, 8Baltimore, Howard, Montgomery, and Prince George’s 9Counties. And for those in the Tier 2 area, the rate 10is $10.70, and that includes all area that aren't 11listed in the Tier 1 area. The Affidavit of Agreement 12must be completed and submitted with the Technical 13Proposal. Failure to complete the -- and submit the 14Living Wage Affidavit of Agreement will result in a 15determination that the Offeror is not responsible. 16Please note that the Living Wage rates are subject to 17annual change by the Department -- Maryland Department 18of Labor, Licensing and Regulation, but the 19contractor's prices under the contract may not change 20because of the Living Wage changes, so Offerors must 21factor this into their pricing proposal submissions. HUNT REPORTING COMPANY Court Reporting and Litigation Support Serving Maryland, Washington, and Virginia 410-766-HUNT (4868) 1-800-950-DEPO (3376) 36 1Any additional information can be found on the Maryland 2DLLR website about Living Wage. So next we're going to 3have Kenneth Jessup talk about the Hiring Agreement. 4 MR. JESSUP: Good morning, everyone. Sorry 5(indiscernible). For those of you who may not be 6familiar with the Hiring Agreement process, it is a 7legislative piece that was developed to encourage the 8use of -- kind of really just a mechanism for providing 9current and former Family Investment Program recipients 10with employment opportunities on State Procurement 11contracts. The populations that we work with are 12Temporary Cash Assistance families and children that 13are seeking employment opportunities, so what we are 14looking for is an opportunity just to see if we can get 15some people with the quality and skills that need 16employment with the contractors to have the positions 17they need. If you have any questions regarding that, 18you can also check on the BPW website. Just type in 19"BPW Advisory Hiring Agreement" and it will give you a 20brief overview of it there. And if you want even more 21information, you can just contact me and I'll be around HUNT REPORTING COMPANY Court Reporting and Litigation Support Serving Maryland, Washington, and Virginia 410-766-HUNT (4868) 1-800-950-DEPO (3376) 37 1with my card and my e-mail. Thank you. 2 MR. KANG: Thank you, Nia, and thank you, 3Kenneth. I'm going to present Section 5 -- I'm sorry 4-- Section 5 and Section 6 of the RFP now. Section 5 5has to do with the Proposal format. Proposal 6submission will be in two parts. Technical Proposal; 7we would like the Technical Proposal, as I said before, 8through Citrix ShareFile. However, if you want to send 9the Proposal in, please contact me. Financial 10Proposals should not be sent through Citrix ShareFile. 11Financial Proposals should not be sent through Citrix 12ShareFile. Please send those to me by mail or hand- 13delivery. So I'm on Section 5 here. So if you are a 14Offeror proposing to serve one program category in one 15geographical location, you've got to send in one 16Proposal. If you are sending in for one program 17category in more than one geographical location, you 18are still submitting one Proposal, but you are sending 19in two separate -- it should be Attachment P's which 20are RCC Program Service Forms. So if you are an 21Offeror that wants to submit for multiple or one HUNT REPORTING COMPANY Court Reporting and Litigation Support Serving Maryland, Washington, and Virginia 410-766-HUNT (4868) 1-800-950-DEPO (3376) 38 1category -- more than one program category in a single 2geographical location, you will be sending in two 3Proposals, so you'll be sending one for each program. 4For each program you're sending in a different 5Proposal. And the last one is Offeror's proposing to 6serve multiple RCC program categories located in more 7than one region. So you are sending in a different 8Proposal for each program essentially. 9 All right. Section 5.2. Please don't send 10anything by fax or e-mail. Please provide no pricing 11information on the Technical Proposal. When you send 12through Citrix ShareFile, if you already have a Citrix 13ID, a current log-on, then you have to send the 14Technical Proposal -- you can do it through your 15current log-on, but you have to send it to our folder, 16so make sure it's marked "RFP" and, you know, just 17submit it there. If you don't have a log-on to the 18system, please contact me and I will get you one, try 19to get you some instructions on how to submit 20proposals. 21 All right. Please send your Proposals in on HUNT REPORTING COMPANY Court Reporting and Litigation Support Serving Maryland, Washington, and Virginia 410-766-HUNT (4868) 1-800-950-DEPO (3376) 39 1time. If they are not on time, then I think I have to 2declare them not on time. It's not what I want to do. 3Please make sure your Technical Proposal is password- 4protected, and I will reach out to you to get the 5password. Let's see here. Technical Proposal 6submissions should consist of Microsoft Word -- one 7Technical Proposal in Microsoft Word, one in Adobe PDF, 8and one also in Adobe PDF with your confidential and 9proprietary information redacted, so that's your PIA 10copy there. All right. Try to put the name of the 11program and the jurisdiction in the -- in the file name 12for us so that we can -- so we'll have them. 13 Financial Proposal submissions. Like I said, 14please send them in by hand-delivery or mail to me, to 15311 West Saratoga Street. Let's see here. If you are 16submitting a budget, and I'll go into detail about this 17a little later -- if you're submitting a budget to me, 18you need to submit two originals -- two original signed 19and dated budgets, and then also a CD or a DVD of the 20budget, which is -- the exact same thing that you would 21send to IRC you're going to be sending to me, but HUNT REPORTING COMPANY Court Reporting and Litigation Support Serving Maryland, Washington, and Virginia 410-766-HUNT (4868) 1-800-950-DEPO (3376) 40 1that's only if you're sending a budget, and I'll get 2into that in a little bit. 3 Let me go over Technical Proposal first. 4Technical Proposal. And I'm on Section 5.3. So you're 5going to be responding to Section 2 and Section 3 of 6the RFP. What I would do and what we're going to ask 7you to do is I would respond to each section, section 8by section, so that it's really easy for us to review. 9If you could just put like a section -- you know, 10Section 2.1 or whatever, you can -- if you could 11respond to that section, just go through it that way, 12and that way your Proposal is organized and it's easy 13for the Evaluation Committee to see exactly how you 14responded to each requirement in the RFP. So I would 15do that for Sections 2 and 3. 16 Please note your Technical Proposal should be 17broken down into tabs. Tab A is your Title Page and 18Table of Contents. Tab A-1 is your confidential and 19proprietary information. Okay. Tab B is your 20Transmittal Letter. Please remember to acknowledge 21receipt of the addenda, your -- the question and HUNT REPORTING COMPANY Court Reporting and Litigation Support Serving Maryland, Washington, and Virginia 410-766-HUNT (4868) 1-800-950-DEPO (3376) 41 1response documents, as well as any amendments. 2 Tab C is your Executive Summary, and we need 3-- we need the service -- the program and the regions 4that you're -- that you're going to be providing 5services for. We need that in the Executive Summary. 6All right. Tab D, that's Minimum Qualifications. 7You're going to be putting your licenses there. And 8Tab E, this is -- this is your -- this is the main part 9of your response. This is where you're going to be 10responding to each section of the Scope of Work, 11Sections 2 and 3. And you will receive -- well, 12Proposals that -- you know, you're going to explain how 13the work is done essentially. Proposals -- you can 14either say we're going to agree to this requirement or 15you can say exactly how you're going to do it, and 16those Proposals will be deemed better. 17 All right. I'm on Tab F, which is Experience 18and Qualifications of Proposed Staff. There is one Key 19Personnel for this RFP and that's your Certified 20Program Administrator, so please submit the 21documentation that we need for your Certified Program HUNT REPORTING COMPANY Court Reporting and Litigation Support Serving Maryland, Washington, and Virginia 410-766-HUNT (4868) 1-800-950-DEPO (3376) 42 1Administrator. You should have one for each of the 2programs that you're applying for. Also, if you are a 3QRTP provider, please provide information about your 4registered or licensed nursing and clinical staff. 5 All right. I am on Tab G, Offeror 6Qualifications and Capabilities. Please give us your 7past experience there. References; please just send us 8your information -- oh, I'm sorry -- the information 9for three references -- for these three references and 10we will contact them. Your list of current and prior 11State contracts, so please list any contracts that you 12have with us already there. Financial Capability; 13you're going to be putting your financial statements 14there. Certificate of Insurance; we'd like a copy of 15that. Tab L; please list your subcontractors and the 16type of work they'll be doing. Tab M is your Legal 17Action Summary. And Tab N is Economic Benefit Factors. 18Please describe how your program will benefit the State 19of Maryland. All right. Almost done with the 20Technical Proposal. Tab O; that's where you're going 21to put all your affidavits. And that's it for the HUNT REPORTING COMPANY Court Reporting and Litigation Support Serving Maryland, Washington, and Virginia 410-766-HUNT (4868) 1-800-950-DEPO (3376) 43 1Technical Proposal. 2 Your Financial Proposal; so you're going to 3be sending those to me, and some of you are going to be 4sending a rate letter, some of you are going to be 5sending a budget, so you should know who you are. For 6-- if you have 2020 IRC rate letter, just please send 7that to me, and that'll be your Financial Proposal. If 8you are an Offeror proposing to serve a new program -- 9so if it's a new program, then you're going to be 10sending me what you would normally send the IRC; you're 11going to be sending the budget, two originals, as well 12as a CD. So, yeah, please note that. That's Section 135.43 and 5.44 of the RFP. All right. That's it for 14Section 5. 15 Section 6. As I said before, this is a 16Request for Proposals, so there will be an Evaluation 17Committee to evaluate your Proposals. We evaluate the 18Technical Proposal first. During that evaluation of 19Technical Proposals we'll have oral presentations, 20which we'll add to your Proposal. We then rank the 21Technical Proposals, and then we open up your Financial HUNT REPORTING COMPANY Court Reporting and Litigation Support Serving Maryland, Washington, and Virginia 410-766-HUNT (4868) 1-800-950-DEPO (3376) 44 1Proposals, but -- one second. I'm sorry. 2 When we rank the Technical Proposals, we're 3going to be using the following evaluation criteria. 4So the first evaluation criteria -- and this is Section 56.2, and these are listed in order of importance. This 6is how we're going to evaluate your Technical Proposal. 7The first one is Offerors who have been certified and 8accredited as QRTP providers under the FFPSA. That's 9your first evaluation criteria. 10 The second one is your response to the Scope 11of Work, and we're going to -- we're going to look at a 12number of subcriteria under this. This is your -- this 13is Section -- Tab B of your Technical Proposal. We're 14going to look at your methodology, your proposed 15services; how they align with the proposed LOIs; how 16your proposed services align with our Ready by 21 17initiative; your methodology to -- used to implement 18services and programs that assist children at 19developing the necessary age-appropriate skills, as 20outlined in our policies; how your proposed services 21align with the Department's IPM, and that's in Section HUNT REPORTING COMPANY Court Reporting and Litigation Support Serving Maryland, Washington, and Virginia 410-766-HUNT (4868) 1-800-950-DEPO (3376) 45 12.37; and also your methodology used to demonstrate 2that the Offeror's organization has implemented a 3family-centered child focus model, including 4maintenance of a -- of community connections, as 5described in the Community Integration section. So 6those are things we're going to be looking for. 7 The third evaluation are the Performance 8Reports. The fourth one is the Experience and 9Qualifications of Proposed Staff. That's your 10Certified Program Administrator. And the last two 11evaluation criteria are your Offeror Qualifications 12Capabilities and Economic Benefit to the State. So as 13I was saying before, we get your Technical Proposals 14in, we have an Evaluation Committee that reviews them, 15and then we rank your Technical Proposals. After we 16rank the Technical Proposals, we'll open your 17Financials, and your financial ranking will be based on 18the provider rates from IRC. And so after we -- after 19we rank the Financials, we're going to do an overall 20ranking, and then from that overall ranking -- the 21overall ranking will be determined, and we're going to HUNT REPORTING COMPANY Court Reporting and Litigation Support Serving Maryland, Washington, and Virginia 410-766-HUNT (4868) 1-800-950-DEPO (3376) 46 1give more weight for the for the Technical Proposal 2ranking than the Financial Proposal ranking, so 3Technical outweighs Financial in the ultimate decision. 4So I think that concludes our presentation of the RFP. 5Are there any questions? 6 MS. JOHNSON: Good morning. I just wanted to 7make one clarification. When Ms. Graves gave the 8Living Wage information, she gave you the Tier 2, 9stating that it's currently $10.10. As you all are 10well aware -- $10.70 -- I'm sorry -- but as you all are 11well aware, during the legislative session this year 12Maryland passed -- the Senate proposed -- they approved 13a bill to increase the State minimum wage for companies 14with at least 14 employees from the 10.70 to $15 an 15hour by the year -- within a five-year period, in 2025. 16So, with that, effective January the 1st, the minimum 17wage will increase to $11 per hour. That being stated, 18it solely will be on Tier 2, so I just wanted to make 19that clarification. 20 MR. KANG: Yeah. And the Living Wage program 21is very important to us, and I trust that everyone out HUNT REPORTING COMPANY Court Reporting and Litigation Support Serving Maryland, Washington, and Virginia 410-766-HUNT (4868) 1-800-950-DEPO (3376) 47 1there is paying everybody a Living Wage to do their 2work. So are there any questions for the RFP? We're 3going to use the mics I think. 4 AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hi. Thank you for going 5over everything. In terms of the QRTPs, so if you're 6not currently accredited, the wait time is extensive. 7Is there any way to get accredited prior to submitting 8this? So I'm a little concerned about that being the 9first thing that's considered, because there's also a 10huge financial cost to it. So how does that balance 11out for the nonprofits that are not accredited, and 12then what if we become accredited or we become QRTPs? 13 MR. KANG: I'm going to let Debbie answer all 14the QRTP questions. It's Debbie Marini from SSA. 15 MS. MARINI: All right. First of all, thank 16you for your question. I wanted to just say that -- 17one thing, just to open up, 'cause I know there's a lot 18of questions about QRTP, and I also want to say that 19it's difficult with the RFP process, you know, to -- 20especially with the changes that are coming down with 21the Children's Bureaus and Family First, to capture HUNT REPORTING COMPANY Court Reporting and Litigation Support Serving Maryland, Washington, and Virginia 410-766-HUNT (4868) 1-800-950-DEPO (3376) 48 1everything timingwise, so I just want to be clear that 2we will be making clarifications and we're answering 3your questions as they come with the clarifications 4that we're getting from the Children's Bureau as well 5and to convey that, while I know that the Family First 6QRTP requirements are quite extensive and an 7opportunity for us all to I guess focus on best 8practices and look at aligning not just what you all 9are doing at your facilities, but also the way in which 10we refer our youth to you, that that is an effort that 11we're making from the program standpoint at DHS and 12SSA, and so I just want to assure you that I know that 13those pieces are happening at the same time, and that 14while the RFP may not have captured all of that -- it's 15difficult to do in a document like that -- we look 16forward to continuing to partner with you on this 17process. 18 In terms of the accreditation pieces, in 19answer to your question, we do recognize that it takes 20time and resources to become accredited. We do not 21have a way around requiring that as -- in order to HUNT REPORTING COMPANY Court Reporting and Litigation Support Serving Maryland, Washington, and Virginia 410-766-HUNT (4868) 1-800-950-DEPO (3376) 49 1become a QRTP. That is a Family First requirement to 2be considered as a QRTP. In terms of the question 3about whether when you become accredited, that you're 4making efforts to becoming accredited, I'm actually 5going to ask -- I'm not sure whether that would need to 6be considered in the next RFP. I am not clear -- I'm 7not sure on that, so I'm going to either defer, if 8somebody knows the answer, or get back to you on that 9piece of it. But I do know that for those of you -- 10for this RFP, my understanding is that you would need 11to have the accreditation in order to be considered in 12that status at this time. 13 AUDIENCE MEMBER: And I think equally 14important though is, if that's the first thing that's 15being considered and given the most weight, it puts the 16people that are not QRTPs at a disadvantage, and it's 17impossible to become a QRTP in that time frame. So is 18there any consideration around -- 19 MS. MARINI: The only other clarification I 20can give to this (indiscernible) is we just received 21clarification and we're going to be responding to the HUNT REPORTING COMPANY Court Reporting and Litigation Support Serving Maryland, Washington, and Virginia 410-766-HUNT (4868) 1-800-950-DEPO (3376) 50 1question that came about regarding the wording in the 2RFP where -- the question was, QRTP accreditation is 3not a category, and so we're getting ready to submit 4our response to that to say that DHS has just received 5clarification from the Children's Bureau and the 6statute does not require that a child care institution 7has to be accredited as a QRTP, but only that it is a 8program accredited by one of the -- one of the 9accreditation bodies, if that makes sense. So 10accreditation as a QRTP is not a requirement, but 11accreditation from one of the bodies, and we will be 12responding to that. We will be responding with the 13Children's Bureau's statute sections referencing that. 14 AUDIENCE MEMBER: Okay. 15 MS. ECTOR: Just to try and answer your 16question, the RFP has a requirement that if there's any 17provider that is certified as a QRTP (indiscernible) 18then submit that certificate with your Proposal. If 19there is a provider that may be in the process of 20becoming a QRTP, then you would submit your proposal 21based on those requirements, whatever the Family First HUNT REPORTING COMPANY Court Reporting and Litigation Support Serving Maryland, Washington, and Virginia 410-766-HUNT (4868) 1-800-950-DEPO (3376) 51 1Act requires. Whatever you have submitted or intend to 2submit for certification, that's what your Proposal 3would look like. Submit it to the Department. Let the 4Department know that you are under consideration for a 5QRTP. You identify your QRT program as your intended 6program, and it will be reviewed in that manner. It 7will be given preference because the Department needs 8QRT programs because of the statute. They're moving in 9a different direction, and so we do need those 10providers and there will be a preference for those 11providers. If we don't get any, then we don't get any. 12Then we will just review the Proposals for whatever 13category or whatever jurisdiction as they come in. If 14you are in the process now or start the process, you 15have until the Department makes a recommendation for 16award to get your certification. I don't know how long 17it takes, but if you are in the process now, you 18probably have until April, May, at the time of 19recommendation to become certified. 20 MS. MARINI: Thank you. 21 AUDIENCE MEMBER: Can you also -- I just want HUNT REPORTING COMPANY Court Reporting and Litigation Support Serving Maryland, Washington, and Virginia 410-766-HUNT (4868) 1-800-950-DEPO (3376) 52 1to clarify the no reject policy. Does that mean that 2everything that's referred to us there's not an option 3to reject? 4 MS. WALKER: I just want to go into the RFP. 5What section was that? 6 AUDIENCE MEMBER: It's on page ten, 2.3.5.B. 7 MS. WALKER: I think we answered that in our 8questions. 9 MR. KANG: Yeah. We answered that in our 10questions. If the child doesn't meet your provider 11profile, then it's okay, you can reject. That's 12correct. 13 MS. WALKER: Yes. Right. That was Question 14-- I'm sorry -- that was Question 10 under the series 15one that was released or published. And so if the -- 16you may reject a youth if she -- if he or she does not 17fit your provider profile. And that's under your 182.3.5; that's about the no reject policy. 19 AUDIENCE MEMBER: And then I had submitted a 20question about the travel reimbursement, but the answer 21was a little confusing. It does say that there is no HUNT REPORTING COMPANY Court Reporting and Litigation Support Serving Maryland, Washington, and Virginia 410-766-HUNT (4868) 1-800-950-DEPO (3376) 53 1reimbursement for travel, that we're responsible for 2transportation, so are we submitting that in our budget 3or on the -- 4 MR. KANG: Right. 5 MS. WALKER: Yes. 6 AUDIENCE MEMBER: So travel is reimbursed? 7 MS. WALKER: Travel will be submitted with 8your budget. 9 AUDIENCE MEMBER: Okay. 10 MR. BADLEY: Good afternoon. Tom Badley, 11Cedar Ridge. I had a question about the ratios. You 12say the minimum is two kids on -- or two staff on duty 13at all times. Does that include overnight staff? 14 MR. KANG: For overnight? 15 MR. BADLEY: Yes. 16 MR. KANG: I received your question. I think 17we're going to look at that and we're going to have to 18get back to you on that. Yeah, we're working on it 19right now. 20 MR. BADLEY: And also in the same area, it 21says male and female, you must have the ability to HUNT REPORTING COMPANY Court Reporting and Litigation Support Serving Maryland, Washington, and Virginia 410-766-HUNT (4868) 1-800-950-DEPO (3376) 54 1accept (indiscernible) and I don't know if that means 2we have to change anything. 3 MR. KANG: I'm not sure what you're referring 4to there. 5 MR. BADLEY: Well, it says you must be able 6to have the ability to serve male and female youth ages 714 to 20. 8 MR. KANG: Okay. I'm sorry. I know you sent 9that question to me yesterday, but I will -- do you 10have a section number there that you're looking at? 11 MR. BADLEY: Yes, 2.3.22.3.E. 12 (Whereupon, there was a discussion off the 13record between staff regarding answer to question.) 14 AUDIENCE MEMBER: Ardena -- 15 MS. WALKER: Yes. 16 AUDIENCE MEMBER: -- it's answered on page 17seven of eight of the questions. 18 MS. WALKER: Thank you. 19 AUDIENCE MEMBER: I submitted the question, 20"DETP requirements state 'must serve male and female.' 21Can a vendor serve one gender at a location or must HUNT REPORTING COMPANY Court Reporting and Litigation Support Serving Maryland, Washington, and Virginia 410-766-HUNT (4868) 1-800-950-DEPO (3376) 55 1they serve both at the location?" "The vendor can 2serve one gender at a location, as described." 3 MS. WALKER: Thank you. 4 MR. BADLEY: I just wanted to make sure that 5applied to the TTH's and group homes? 6 MS. WALKER: Yes. 7 MR. BADLEY: Does that apply to all ages? 8 MS. WALKER: Yes. 9 MR. BADLEY: Okay. 10 MR. KANG: Any other questions? 11 AUDIENCE MEMBER: Good morning. 12 MR. KANG: Good morning. 13 AUDIENCE MEMBER: I have a question about the 14MBE requirement. 15 MR. KANG: Yeah. 16 AUDIENCE MEMBER: I wanted to know if -- you 17said something about 25 or more beds per program. Is 18it per program or is it the whole -- across all the 19programs that you're submitting the RFP for? 20 MR. KANG: Actually, I'm sorry. I don't know 21the answer to that. HUNT REPORTING COMPANY Court Reporting and Litigation Support Serving Maryland, Washington, and Virginia 410-766-HUNT (4868) 1-800-950-DEPO (3376) 56 1 MS. WALKER: I don't either. 2 MR. KANG: Yeah, I'm sorry. Yeah, we'll put 3that one in writing. Yeah, I'm sorry. Yeah, we'll get 4back to you. 5 AUDIENCE MEMBER: And then I had another 6question about the VSBEs. Is that something new? 7That's something new, right? 8 MR. KANG: It's relatively new to the State, 9yes. 10 AUDIENCE MEMBER: Okay. And you said that's 11across any of the RFP you have to submit one percent, 12right, for every program? 13 MR. KANG: Yes, for every program, yes. 14 AUDIENCE MEMBER: Another question I had is, 15can the Certified Program Administrator be the same for 16all the Proposals? 17 MR. KANG: It said in the Proposal that you 18would need a different Certified Program Administrator. 19 AUDIENCE MEMBER: For every proposal? 20 MR. KANG: Actually, I'm going to defer to 21SSA on this. HUNT REPORTING COMPANY Court Reporting and Litigation Support Serving Maryland, Washington, and Virginia 410-766-HUNT (4868) 1-800-950-DEPO (3376) 57 1 MS. WALKER: I'm sorry. So your question is, 2can the Certified Administrator -- say you want to 3apply for multiple programs and can that Certified 4Administrator be the Certified Administrator for all of 5the programs? 6 AUDIENCE MEMBER: That's correct. 7 MS. WALKER: Is that the question? 8 AUDIENCE MEMBER: Uh-huh. 9 MS. WALKER: And so at this point I -- let me 10get back to you on that question. I don't think so. 11I'm going to say it's no, because they are different 12programs. I just can't -- 13 AUDIENCE MEMBER: Okay. Because what if you 14have an organization that only has one Certified 15Program Administrator but you have multiple programs? 16 MS. WALKER: Let me -- Aretha, you want to 17take that? Is Licensing here? 18 MS. ECTOR: Is anyone here from Licensing 19that would like to address that question? Thank you. 20 MR. THOMAS: It's never been a requirement to 21have more than one Certified Residential Program HUNT REPORTING COMPANY Court Reporting and Litigation Support Serving Maryland, Washington, and Virginia 410-766-HUNT (4868) 1-800-950-DEPO (3376) 58 1Administrator; just one per provider to oversee all of 2the sites and so forth. 3 AUDIENCE MEMBER: Thank you, guys, for 4answering all of our questions. My first one is I 5think on page 13. For Section 2.3.14.A, the statement 6ends with the word "and", and I was wondering if there 7was more to that statement that we needed to know. 8 MS. WALKER: What was the section again? 9 AUDIENCE MEMBER: On "A". 10 MR. KANG: I'll look into it and see if it 11printed wrong or something. 12 AUDIENCE MEMBER: Thank you. 13 MR. KANG: Okay. 14 AUDIENCE MEMBER: I have three more. Who 15will serve as the State Project Manager and in what 16department of SSA will that person reside? 17 MS. WALKER: I will be serving as the State 18Project Officer, and it'll be under the SSA Contracts 19and Monitoring. 20 AUDIENCE MEMBER: For Section 3.11, 21substitution of the Key Personnel, with the State HUNT REPORTING COMPANY Court Reporting and Litigation Support Serving Maryland, Washington, and Virginia 410-766-HUNT (4868) 1-800-950-DEPO (3376) 59 1Project Manager approval requirements that have been 2added, there in one of the sections is a two-week 3requirement to fill open positions for such positions 4as your RCC PA, your clinicians, and your nurses, and 5those historically have been very difficult positions 6to fill. If we can demonstrate a good faith effort to 7fill the position and have internal people substituting 8in that position, will that be acceptable as part of 9the Contract? 10 MS. WALKER: I think we will make that 11determined on a case by case basis, so as that occurs, 12then the requirement under the RFP is to still notify 13me, the State Project Officer, and then have that 14discussion, and then that determination will be made. 15 AUDIENCE MEMBER: Okay. And my final 16question is regarding the MBE goal. It was clarified 17at a recent RFP meeting that the MBE is a goal and the 18VSBE are goals and not requirements, but, in reading 19the Contract, there are liquidated damages that can be 20assessed in the Contract, and it says they can be, not 21will be. So in what circumstances would SSA opt to HUNT REPORTING COMPANY Court Reporting and Litigation Support Serving Maryland, Washington, and Virginia 410-766-HUNT (4868) 1-800-950-DEPO (3376) 60 1enact those liquidated damages and what would 2(indiscernible) the threshold of good faith in 3determining that? 4 MS. WALKER: We have an MBE liaison and 5coordinator, and I'm probably going to defer that 6question to her, so if you could put that question in 7writing and we will get our MBE liaison/representative 8to answer that. 9 MS. JOHNSON: Can I? 10 MS. WALKER: Sure. 11 MS. JOHNSON: Thank you. So for the MBE, 12liquidated damages are usually applied on a case by 13case basis, but that's upon your good effort that you 14showed that you tried to comply with the goal, so if 15you try to get MBEs and you show that, that's the first 16step. But if you have an MBE goal, and, for example, 17the MBE is not working out for some reason and you try 18to work with them to comply with the goal, you've done 19everything you can to try to reach that goal and you're 20unable to do that, but if we see that you aren't doing 21everything you can or you're not paying your MBE -- HUNT REPORTING COMPANY Court Reporting and Litigation Support Serving Maryland, Washington, and Virginia 410-766-HUNT (4868) 1-800-950-DEPO (3376) 61 1they've provided services and you're not paying them, 2that's a reason for liquidated damages possibly being 3sought, because what we would do is, if you did not 4meet the goal and we ask you for a Corrective Action 5Plan on how you would intend to meet the goal, you're 6still not meeting that goal, we don't see a good faith 7effort that you're attempting to meet the goal, then we 8may apply liquidated damages that way. And I want to 9make sure that you're clear and you understand what I'm 10getting at. I'm not sure who asked the question. Did 11I answer your question? 12 AUDIENCE MEMBER: I don't want to take over 13the room. Yes, but the question is, so in the last 14contract I have a history of fires, as I was attempting 15in good faith to meet the requirement and then 16escalated (indiscernible) through the MBE Office 17stating that the next step could be terminating the 18contract, and so we modified our business arrangement 19and we made a business decision to try to meet the 20goal. And, with the new RFP, we're looking at our 21business practices and what we want to sustain and what HUNT REPORTING COMPANY Court Reporting and Litigation Support Serving Maryland, Washington, and Virginia 410-766-HUNT (4868) 1-800-950-DEPO (3376) 62 1we want to do differently in the welfare of children, 2and it may require us to move away from one of our MBE 3providers for that, which would we mean we fall under 4the MBE goal again, which we would try to regroup in 5another effort or with a new MBE subcontractor, but 6what would be visible in your office would be we met 7our goal, now we're not meeting our goal. And there is 8a concern that there would be an effort to -- if it 9took another year or two to get that back up to where 10we are, that now there is an assessment of damages for 11that, which was not in the last contract. 12 MS. JOHNSON: Again, a good faith effort. 13You have to show a good faith effort. That means that 14you made good tries to reach the goal. You have to 15show that. If we think you're attempting to do all 16that you can do to reach that goal, liquidated damages 17would not apply. 18 AUDIENCE MEMBER: Okay. 19 MS. JOHNSON: But if we see that you aren't 20doing that (indiscernible) -- 21 AUDIENCE MEMBER: Okay. Thank you. HUNT REPORTING COMPANY Court Reporting and Litigation Support Serving Maryland, Washington, and Virginia 410-766-HUNT (4868) 1-800-950-DEPO (3376) 63 1 MS. JOHNSON: You're welcome. 2 AUDIENCE MEMBER: I had sent a question in, 3but I'm still a little confused about the ratio, 4because some of the ratio is -- for example, for group 5homes, it says four to one, and then it says during the 6day it has to be two to one, that the COMAR regs are 7different, so what -- based on this RFP, we have to 8submit with these ratio guidelines? 9 MR. KANG: Right. 10 AUDIENCE MEMBER: Even though -- so like for 11the group home, where it says four to one and it says 12you have to have -- for every kid, you have to have two 13staff, so then that would be a two to one? 14 MR. KANG: I'm not understanding. 15 MS. WALKER: What she's saying -- what 16(indiscernible) saying and what the question is, is 17there are different ratios established for each program 18type. However, the State is requiring that there be 19two staff for every one child, so I know it kind of 20sounds kind of confusing. So while the ratio may be 21say one -- four to one, there must always be two HUNT REPORTING COMPANY Court Reporting and Litigation Support Serving Maryland, Washington, and Virginia 410-766-HUNT (4868) 1-800-950-DEPO (3376) 64 1employees on duty at all times. 2 AUDIENCE MEMBER: So then it wouldn't be a 3four to one ratio; it would be a four to two ratio, 4even though it says four to one? 5 MS. WALKER: Right. And I think we responded 6to that question, but, essentially, there must always 7be two employees per one kid. 8 AUDIENCE MEMBER: Okay. And so -- and I was 9just confused, because COMAR says something different, 10so this is essentially overriding COMAR? 11 MS. WALKER: It's the State requirement -- 12 AUDIENCE MEMBER: It's a requirement. 13 MS. WALKER: -- to have two employees per 14every one kid. 15 AUDIENCE MEMBER: Okay. And so in terms of 16budget submission, obviously, we're going to have to -- 17 MS. WALKER: Build that in your budget. 18 AUDIENCE MEMBER: And -- okay. And so the -- 19it's the expectation -- then obviously that's supported 20in the budget (indiscernible) -- 21 MS. WALKER: That's going to be a HUNT REPORTING COMPANY Court Reporting and Litigation Support Serving Maryland, Washington, and Virginia 410-766-HUNT (4868) 1-800-950-DEPO (3376) 65 1requirement, and you're going to have to, you know, 2put it in your budget so that it's supported, but it's 3still two employees to one kid. 4 AUDIENCE MEMBER: And then other -- similar 5with the LOIs, some of the LOIs are jumping up, so some 6of the LOIs for, say, therapeutic group homes that 7didn't previously require on-site nursing is now -- 8since the LOI is increasing, so is it the same concept, 9that we're just going with -- 10 MS. WALKER: I can defer that question to 11Licensing regarding the level of intensity and the 12changes. 13 AUDIENCE MEMBER: Okay. 14 MS. MARINI: I think there's a question over 15here that -- 16 MS. CHAPMAN: I asked (indiscernible) 17essentially, because I didn't get the answers to the 18first questions that were sent out (indiscernible). 19The first one, I'm trying to understand the 5.4.3, 20which leads to the Offeror's approved 2020 IRC rate 21letter. I'm trying to understand, that rate letter HUNT REPORTING COMPANY Court Reporting and Litigation Support Serving Maryland, Washington, and Virginia 410-766-HUNT (4868) 1-800-950-DEPO (3376) 66 1(indiscernible) and if we submit that, we would not 2have the option refine the budget based on the ratio, 3on (indiscernible) they're a little bit more 4sophisticated than what our model is, there would be a 5cost impact. So I'm kind of confused about the 2020 6rate and it's approval before we submit it. Can 7someone clarify that for me? 8 MS. WALKER: Yes. So for your submission 9purposes for the RFP, the FY 20 rate is essentially 10going to be a place hold. That's really what it's 11going to be for your submission package, but you 12attended -- or the IRC had three separate meetings in 13reference to the FY 21 submissions, and so trying to 14give some more detail in reference to that, so you're 15really want to be doing two things. You're going to 16basically submit the FY 20 rate for current providers. 17That's going to be listed in your Financial. And then 18you're going to be -- if you're a current provider and 19you're adding a new program, then you're going to be 20submitting that budget to the IRC and to Sang as well. 21So you are, in essence -- this RFP is considered the FY HUNT REPORTING COMPANY Court Reporting and Litigation Support Serving Maryland, Washington, and Virginia 410-766-HUNT (4868) 1-800-950-DEPO (3376) 67 121 Proposal, and so you would have or would be basing 2your budget based on your submission -- your Technical 3submissions in this RFP, so you're doing both. 4 MS. CHAPMAN: So we're only submitting the 5current approved rates for this Proposal 6(indiscernible) budget. 7 MS. WALKER: For the Proposal. 8Okay. So now what you're doing is this. You're 9submitting the FY 20 Rate Letter with your Proposal. 10That's says, okay, that's my Financial. However, in 11order to get or obtain an FY 21 rating, then you would 12follow the requirements of the IRC to obtain your FY 21 13rate and -- 14 MS. CHAPMAN: Okay. Got it. And that would 15be (indiscernible) the enhancement of the one that you 16submitted already? 17 MS. WALKER: Say that one more time. 18 MS. CHAPMAN: So that would include the 19enhancement of the program that you are resubmitting 20with the ratio expectation? 21 MS. WALKER: Yes, ma'am. HUNT REPORTING COMPANY Court Reporting and Litigation Support Serving Maryland, Washington, and Virginia 410-766-HUNT (4868) 1-800-950-DEPO (3376) 68 1 MS. CHAPMAN: And then the rate expectation? 2 MS. WALKER: Yes. 3 MS. CHAPMAN: -- and then the enhancement 4expectation, the family engagement and any treatment 5expectations? 6 MS. WALKER: Yes. 7 MS. CHAPMAN: Okay. Thank you. The second 8question, regarding the gender issue, we're seeing a 9lot more transkids and we get transgirls -- actually, 10transboys -- they're girls going to boys. Would that 11be okay in a high intensity level that is not 12specializing but integrating those kids into our 13current population or do we separate them in a 14specialty model or can we mainstream them in with other 15youth, which is what we are actually doing now? 16 MS. MARINI: Yeah. I would think it's on a 17case by case basis, Sheryl. We would have to examine 18that, but I know that there is -- and I'm not sure on 19-- with OLM if there's a response, but I know that we 20are looking at making sure that you have a policy 21related to those youth and how they will be handled and HUNT REPORTING COMPANY Court Reporting and Litigation Support Serving Maryland, Washington, and Virginia 410-766-HUNT (4868) 1-800-950-DEPO (3376) 69 1how they will be, you know, incorporated into your 2programming, and so that's the primary piece, and then, 3of course, examining whether or not you're following 4that protocol and whether the -- our Licensing and 5Monitoring is reviewing it with you and insuring that 6that youth is safe and, you know, supported. 7 MS. CHAPMAN: And my final question, at least 8at this point, speaks to we are now really 9mainstreaming and we're being held appropriately 10accountable for the certification of child care youth 11workers and administrators. Is there any expectation 12(indiscernible) recruit them and then pay them with the 13current salaries that would be the standard across the 14State? In certain geographical (indiscernible) you're 15creating a challenge on the retention of the 16professionals (indiscernible) -- is there any 17expectation that this RFP is going to accommodate some 18professional increase on the same workers other than 19the two percent cost-of-living increases that we are 20looking at (indiscernible) -- I know this is probably 21(indiscernible) question, but I was wondering HUNT REPORTING COMPANY Court Reporting and Litigation Support Serving Maryland, Washington, and Virginia 410-766-HUNT (4868) 1-800-950-DEPO (3376) 70 1(indiscernible) in terms of the market impact of the 2certification, professionalizing counselors. 3 MS. WALKER: (Indiscernible) respond to that 4particular question, but I believe the response that 5you received before (indiscernible) the increase in the 6minimum wage increases, things like that. And maybe 7I'm not the person to answer that particular question, 8but feel free to write it in and we'll find, you know, 9an answer for you. 10 MS. CHAPMAN: Well, maybe (indiscernible) we 11went through the non-preferred status, which simply 12allows the regular rate shows up (indiscernible) and 13frequently for me that been (indiscernible) because 14we're trying to maintain staff and we have to 15compensate with (indiscernible). What would be a non- 16preferred bias in this approach? There's an 17expectation for us to hold the cost down 18(indiscernible) because we've been penalized for paying 19(indiscernible) -- 20 MS. WALKER: That's really not a question for 21SSA, because SSA does not determine the rate for the HUNT REPORTING COMPANY Court Reporting and Litigation Support Serving Maryland, Washington, and Virginia 410-766-HUNT (4868) 1-800-950-DEPO (3376) 71 1budget. It's an IRC matter and its committee that 2determines what the rates will be and what's 3(indiscernible). They determine whether your project 4is approved or not, not SSA. 5 MS. CHAPMAN: Okay. Because in the past 6throughout the nonpreferred status issue, which has 7been bounced around (indiscernible) go ahead and do 8that and then we're told that we're not (indiscernible) 9so -- but that will go to IRC is what you're saying? 10 MS. WALKER: Right. 11 MS. CHAPMAN: Okay. 12 MS. WALKER: I want to call Karen, if you 13wanted to respond to her question. 14 MS. POWELL: So as you submit your records to 15the IRC, as we said in our provider meeting, please put 16your actual cost and any changes in your expenses, 17based on the requirements for the RFP, and the IRC will 18consider those budgets based on what your submissions 19are. 20 AUDIENCE MEMBER: I have a few questions. 21The first question. There were several references made HUNT REPORTING COMPANY Court Reporting and Litigation Support Serving Maryland, Washington, and Virginia 410-766-HUNT (4868) 1-800-950-DEPO (3376) 72 1to the ages of 14 through 20. Currently on licenses or 2(indiscernible) it's 13 through 21. Is that going to 3require the licensing to change? 4 MS. WALKER: Andre? 5 MR. THOMAS: (Indiscernible response.) 6 AUDIENCE MEMBER: The other question I had -- 7 MS. WALKER: Excuse me. Wait a minute. What 8was that? Andre, get the mic, so that way everybody 9can hear your response. 10 MR. THOMAS: So based on the RFP, your 11licensing should have the ages of what -- 12 AUDIENCE MEMBER: 14 to 20? 13 MR. THOMAS: -- 14 through 21. 14 MS. WALKER: 20. 15 AUDIENCE MEMBER: And I have another 16question. 17 (Whereupon, there was a discussion off the 18record clarifying the section to refer to.) 19 MS. WALKER: Section 2. He's talking about 20the age ranges on the different programs throughout 21Section 2 in the age group 14 through 20. And what his HUNT REPORTING COMPANY Court Reporting and Litigation Support Serving Maryland, Washington, and Virginia 410-766-HUNT (4868) 1-800-950-DEPO (3376) 73 1question was, was that the license has age 13 through 221. And so Andre -- you know, I wanted Andre to 3respond to his question as to -- and Andre's response 4was that, as far as this RFP is concerned, then that 5age range should match the ages for those programs in 6the RFP. 7 AUDIENCE MEMBER: So with that, I just want 8to be clear that when providers get calls or referrals 9for any kids ages 13 -- 10 MS. WALKER: That's typically what's called a 11variance, and initially that's coordinated between SSA 12and Licensing. So, Andre, would you like to respond to 13-- he's asking Licensing questions here. 14 AUDIENCE MEMBER: So if a provider receives a 15referral or a call to take a kid age 13, will that 16require a waiver? 17 MS. WALKER: Yes, it does. 18 AUDIENCE MEMBER: And my other question -- 19and I'm sorry I can't remember what section it referred 20to, but it was earlier on in the opening of the 21conference, and that was "based upon the needs of the HUNT REPORTING COMPANY Court Reporting and Litigation Support Serving Maryland, Washington, and Virginia 410-766-HUNT (4868) 1-800-950-DEPO (3376) 74 1RFP" was stated, so that was with regards to the client 2profile I believe or the kid profile based upon the 3needs of the RFP. How does that correspond to the 4(indiscernible) what we have in our provider profile or 5the level of intensities, because we make that referral 6that's reflective of the needs of the RFP, but, as a 7provider, we also have a provider profile. What would 8be -- I don't think it's -- it could be related to the 9no reject, but that's not the context I'm asking the 10question in. 11 MS. WALKER: Could you put that question in 12writing, because the syllabus -- I want to make sure I 13respond appropriately, so if you could just kind of 14send us that in writing, because I don't have the 15section you're referring to, so I can't really -- you 16know, I can't really respond to it. 17 AUDIENCE MEMBER: Okay. It was earlier on in 18Mr. Kang's part of the (indiscernible) in the first 19section of the RFP and he said based upon the needs of 20the RFP. 21 MS. WALKER: Sang, he's saying it's something HUNT REPORTING COMPANY Court Reporting and Litigation Support Serving Maryland, Washington, and Virginia 410-766-HUNT (4868) 1-800-950-DEPO (3376) 75 1that -- when you presented. He's asking a question. 2He can't remember what section, but you said earlier on 3it was based on the needs of the RFP. 4 MR. KANG: Right. What section are you 5referring to? 6 MS. WALKER: He doesn't know what section. 7 AUDIENCE MEMBER: I'm sorry. I didn't write 8the section down. It was earlier on when you talked 9about the types of youth referred to programs and it 10was a requirement based upon the needs of the RFP. 11That was the reference you made. And I just wanted to 12make sure that -- 13 MR. KANG: I said that? 14 AUDIENCE MEMBER: It was nine or ten. It was 15page nine. 16 MR. KANG: Page nine. Okay. 17 (Cross-talk between audience and staff 18regarding page numbers in RFP.) 19 MS. ECTOR: I think the numbers that are 20requested on the types of programs are certainly 21indicated in the RFP and based on the needs of the HUNT REPORTING COMPANY Court Reporting and Litigation Support Serving Maryland, Washington, and Virginia 410-766-HUNT (4868) 1-800-950-DEPO (3376) 76 1State SSA. However, with respect to referrals, 2children will be referred to your program based on your 3provider profile. The other question about the age 4grouping, when you send that in, definitely reference 5the section, because the only section I see that talks 6about age is the DETP has specific age groups, and then 7there's a suggested grouping of kids in group homes and 8it says 14 to 17 and then it goes up, so make sure you 9reference the section you were referring to, because I 10don't see where it requires these certain age groups, 11other than that limited DETP program. 12 MR. HUBNER: Hi. This is Louis Hubner with 13The Children's Guild. A question with regard to 14ratios. Simple example, to the extent that we have 15eight children in one house, all asleep, eight 16children, we're having four staff? 17 MS. WALKER: So you're talking in the middle 18of the night and the ratio is one to eight? 19 MR. HUBNER: If I have eight children, 20they're all asleep, it's two o'clock in the morning, 21what is my staffing requirement? HUNT REPORTING COMPANY Court Reporting and Litigation Support Serving Maryland, Washington, and Virginia 410-766-HUNT (4868) 1-800-950-DEPO (3376) 77 1 MS. WALKER: If they say there needs to be 2two staff on duty at all times, then it would be two to 3eight. 4 MR. HUBNER: Okay. It's not two to one then 5for 24 hour staff? If it's two to one, I need four 6staff? 7 MS. WALKER: No. 8 MR. KANG: What program are you talking 9about? 10 MS. MARINI: What programs? 11 MR. HUBNER: Therapeutic group home. 12 MS. WALKER: Therapeutic group home. 13 MR. HUBNER: I thought I heard -- I though it 14would be four to one, but later I thought I heard I 15thought I heard him say maybe it's two to one during 16the night, so I'm just trying to get that clarified. 17 (Whereupon, there was cross-talk regarding 18question.) 19 MR. KANG: Okay. Yeah. Can you send that 20one in writing? Yeah, you're right. 21 AUDIENCE MEMBER: May I -- the issue with HUNT REPORTING COMPANY Court Reporting and Litigation Support Serving Maryland, Washington, and Virginia 410-766-HUNT (4868) 1-800-950-DEPO (3376) 78 1waiting for that in writing is December 16th we have to 2have our staffing patterns to the IRC based on what 3we're going to propose, correct? And so my question is 4how do we get this to you in writing, how do we get the 5response and have enough time to prepare our budgets 6responsibly to meet that December 16th, time frame? 7 AUDIENCE MEMBER: Or is there any option to 8push back that December 16th? 9 MS. WALKER: That's not an SSA -- a response 10for SSA. That would come from Licensing. Currently -- 11 MS. ECTOR: Well, I mean, thank you for 12letting us know about the December 16th. We'll get 13that out to you. The question that we're considering 14is the overnight ratio. During the day, it's still two 15staff must be present. We are -- as they indicated, 16we'll consider whether that same requirement is 17necessary for overnight or get that out as soon as we 18can within the next day or two. 19 AUDIENCE MEMBER: Can I follow up on that? 20 MR. KANG: Yes. 21 AUDIENCE MEMBER: Because If you have two HUNT REPORTING COMPANY Court Reporting and Litigation Support Serving Maryland, Washington, and Virginia 410-766-HUNT (4868) 1-800-950-DEPO (3376) 79 1kids -- two kids -- or three kids you're supposed to 2have two staff, right? So with six kids, we're 3supposed to have four staff, right, and (indiscernible 4due to cross-talk of audience) -- with eight kids in 5the daytime, how many staff do we need? 6 MS. WALKER: Look at your staffing ratios. 7 MS. ECTOR: Staffing ratios based on levels 8of care. 9 MS. WALKER: Right. 10 MS. ECTOR: Look at that ratio. If you have 11eight children for one staff person, that's what the 12level of care is. SSA's requirement is that you have 13another staff person, so it's eight to two. And part 14of that is if there's an emergency, something happens 15that one staff person has to leave, the kids are left 16alone. So it's eight residents, one staff person plus 17one staff one person, so it's eight to two. The level 18of care ratio does not change. 19 MS. WALKER: Thank you. Any other questions? 20 AUDIENCE MEMBER: Just a follow-up with that. 21Just operationally, I understand having extra staff on HUNT REPORTING COMPANY Court Reporting and Litigation Support Serving Maryland, Washington, and Virginia 410-766-HUNT (4868) 1-800-950-DEPO (3376) 80 1at all times, but people are always out in the 2community. That means leaving one staff back in the 3unit. Is that also applicable here or is it just 4overall on shifts you have to that ratio? 5 MS. WALKER: Yes, that's just based on the 6shift. 7 AUDIENCE MEMBER: Thank you. And just 8another follow-up on that. How does that apply for 9transportation? So if you're -- if two staff need to 10be with one -- at least one -- at least two staff are 11left with one child at all times, what if they're 12transporting, do you need two staff for transport? 13 MS. WALKER: No. 14 AUDIENCE MEMBER: Okay. I have another 15question also about the ages on the licensure. If your 16-- so if your license is beyond that 14 to 20 age range 17that's required within this RFP, are you able to serve 18youth outside of that 14 to 20 age range within the RFP 19contracted programs? 20 MS. WALKER: Andre, you want to answer that 21question? I would say -- my response would be no, HUNT REPORTING COMPANY Court Reporting and Litigation Support Serving Maryland, Washington, and Virginia 410-766-HUNT (4868) 1-800-950-DEPO (3376) 81 1because the age requirements are stated within the RFP. 2Now, again, with the other gentleman that asked the 3question if there was a 13 year old, these are -- you 4now, there are variance requirements for things that 5happen that OLM decides, so, Andre, do you want to 6answer that question? 7 MR. THOMAS: That question would need to be 8posed to us in writing. Good answers. 9 MS. WALKER: Andre, I didn't hear your 10response. We didn't hear it up here. 11 MR. THOMAS: I need people to put your 12questions in writing to us for a response. 13 MS. WALKER: Okay. Okay. 14 AUDIENCE MEMBER: One other question. 15Related to the Key Personnel and the approval for the 16clinical and the nursing staff, again, it's really 17clearly laid out in the solicitation what the 18contractor's responsibility is, but just with the 19challenging workforce environment, how can we -- what's 20the time frame we can expect to get a response to be 21sent in for approval for hiring for these positions? HUNT REPORTING COMPANY Court Reporting and Litigation Support Serving Maryland, Washington, and Virginia 410-766-HUNT (4868) 1-800-950-DEPO (3376) 82 1 MS. WALKER: Debbie, she's talking about the 2QRTP for the nursing staff. 3 MS. MARINI: I'm sorry. You asked what -- 4you asked what is the requirement for hiring if you 5don't already have them on -- 6 AUDIENCE MEMBER: What would be the time 7frame that we can expect to get approval to hire the 8Key Personnel that is -- we need to have that approval 9before we can hire them from the -- I thought it was 10the State Project Manager. 11 AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yes, Key Personnel. It's 12under the Key Personnel section that if we want to 13substitute one of our Key Personnel, there's 14requirements for within 30 days of the contract; then 15there's requirements within the contract. I thought it 16said 10 days, but did we have to submit within 10 days? 17 AUDIENCE MEMBER: (Indiscernible) on the 18contractor's side it was clear about like how long we 19had to permit that. I was just wondering, because the 20market's so competitive right now and we have to offer 21very quickly these positions, when we could expect to HUNT REPORTING COMPANY Court Reporting and Litigation Support Serving Maryland, Washington, and Virginia 410-766-HUNT (4868) 1-800-950-DEPO (3376) 83 1get a response for approving those positions to offer. 2 MS. MARINI: Well, I think I'm understanding 3-- I understand the question and I understand the 4change in practice, so I would say that we would need 5to get back to you with -- if it's not clear in the RFP 6how long the Project Manager would take to get back to 7you on the approval, we will clarify that. 8 AUDIENCE MEMBER: Okay. Thank you. I just 9have one more question about the rates and the budget 10submission. So I understand that we have a 2020 rate 11for our current program; that's what we submit. But if 12we are -- as an agency, we have multiple locations -- 13we are proposing to build a program that we have a rate 14for but at a different location, so at a new location 15it's going to be a new program. Should that be our 16rate for the program we offer somewhere else or should 17that be a budget that gets submitted? 18 MS. WALKER: Karen. IRC, can you get the 19mic? 20 MS. POWELL: Going into that in two ways. 21One, I'd defer to the requirements for the RFP for the HUNT REPORTING COMPANY Court Reporting and Litigation Support Serving Maryland, Washington, and Virginia 410-766-HUNT (4868) 1-800-950-DEPO (3376) 84 1financial requirements, but if you are submitting a new 2program that is different than what you are currently 3offering, then you will need to submit that to the IRC 4by February 15th and a request for us to consider a new 5rate, so it's two separate steps. So follow what the 6RFP is asking you to do, but if you are asking for a 7different rate for a new program, then submit that to 8the IRC by February 15th. 9 AUDIENCE MEMBER: Thank you. For -- again on 10page 77, for the RFP requirements for Key Personnel, 11letter "G", numbers three and four, we have to include 12three references for Key Personnel. Is that the same 13as our references; we just provide you the contact 14information and the references would be done that way 15or is that us providing reference -- written reference 16letters for those personnel? 17 MR. KANG: No. You're just giving us contact 18information so that we can contact the references. 19 AUDIENCE MEMBER: Thank you. And for number 20four, "Include letters of intended commitment to work 21on the project, including letters from any proposed HUNT REPORTING COMPANY Court Reporting and Litigation Support Serving Maryland, Washington, and Virginia 410-766-HUNT (4868) 1-800-950-DEPO (3376) 85 1subcontractors." Subcontractors I don't have a problem 2with. Asking our clinicians and our nursing staff to 3sign letters of commitment that they will continue to 4work at our agency gets a little dicey, because then it 5is deemed -- are they under a contract with us, so my 6HR Department is a little concerned about us requiring 7our personnel to write a -- to sign a letter of intent 8to continue with us for a time period, as that seems to 9get -- and on our part as well, within a new realm of 10Human Resources. 11 MR. KANG: Can you put that one in writing to 12me? 13 AUDIENCE MEMBER: Sure. 14 MR. KANG: Yeah. We'll take care of it. 15 AUDIENCE MEMBER: And I promise only two 16more. In terms of the financial, when you're ranking 17the financials, if we're just submitting a rate letter, 18how is -- what is the ranking based on? 19 MR. KANG: Your Financial Proposals -- or 20your financial ranking will be based on your provider 21rates. HUNT REPORTING COMPANY Court Reporting and Litigation Support Serving Maryland, Washington, and Virginia 410-766-HUNT (4868) 1-800-950-DEPO (3376) 86 1 AUDIENCE MEMBER: Right, but so like -- 2 MR. KANG: It'll be your FY 21 provider 3rates. 4 AUDIENCE MEMBER: So -- but does that carry a 5certain amount of weight, so if, what, you have a lower 6rate you get lower points or a higher rate you get more 7points? 8 MR. KANG: Lower rates would be higher ranked 9and -- the highest ranked would be the lowest rate. 10 AUDIENCE MEMBER: Okay. And then just 11logistically, in terms of time frames, we're submitting 12this is in February. When will we get the final 13verification of if we're awarded a contract or not? 14 MS. JOHNSON: You'll get that information 15once the evaluations have been completed and the 16recommendations have been approved. 17 AUDIENCE MEMBER: Like will it come out 18before the usual (indiscernible) at the end or -- 19 MS. JOHNSON: That depends upon how long it 20takes us to evaluate all of the Proposals. 21 MS. ECTOR: And just to follow up on the HUNT REPORTING COMPANY Court Reporting and Litigation Support Serving Maryland, Washington, and Virginia 410-766-HUNT (4868) 1-800-950-DEPO (3376) 87 1substitution of personnel issue, the Department is not 2necessarily approving your hires. That's not what the 3Department does. But the Department does want notice 4if you are substituting Key Personnel, which is that 5program mechanism, and part of that is because it's an 6evaluation criteria, and if you propose, for instance, 7one Program Manager for purposes of the evaluation and 8then after awarding the contract that person is gone, 9we have concerns about that, because we've seen that 10kind of bait and switch, but the Department wants to 11know this; or if someone leaves because they resign and 12have another job, the Department needs notice of that 13and that substitution. Ideally, if you can do it 15 14days in advance (indiscernible) if not, because 15(indiscernible) get it in when you can. The Department 16will acknowledge that notice, but we are not approving 17your hires. 18 AUDIENCE MEMBER: So just one last 19clarification about the rate issue. So I understand 20this lady's question earlier. There's, at least in 21part, some amount of points that are being -- that are HUNT REPORTING COMPANY Court Reporting and Litigation Support Serving Maryland, Washington, and Virginia 410-766-HUNT (4868) 1-800-950-DEPO (3376) 88 1considered regarding the 20 rate -- FY 20 rate. So you 2have a program, you submit your FY 20 rate letter; that 3is considered in the evaluation and, ultimately, the 4award of a contract, but that FY 20 rate is in no way 5related to the Technical Proposal that was submitted or 6FY 21, and -- I mean, I would contend that we will see 7rates escalate because of some of the changes in the 8requirements of this RFP, some of the ratio changes, 9providers who aren't accredited, who aren't a QRTP that 10are moving in that direction and that comes with a 11cost, so when they go through IRC for their 21 rate, 12it's going to be more than the FY 20 letter, but that's 13just being considered when making an award, and so I'm 14just -- I'm trying to understand how that makes sense. 15 MR. KANG: Your financial ranking will be 16based on FY 21 rates. That FY 20 rate that you're 17sending to me, that's just like a placeholder. That's 18your Financial Proposal sent to me. 19 AUDIENCE MEMBER: So, ultimately, you will 20wait until FY 21 rates are assessed? 21 MR. KANG: Right. And so if you have a HUNT REPORTING COMPANY Court Reporting and Litigation Support Serving Maryland, Washington, and Virginia 410-766-HUNT (4868) 1-800-950-DEPO (3376) 89 1current program, you're going to be sending that rate 2letter to me and you're going to send your budget to 3IRC. The IRC's going to give you the FY 21 letter and 4then everything will be based on FY 21 rates. 5 AUDIENCE MEMBER: Okay. 6 AUDIENCE MEMBER: So that gets back to the 7evaluation period. In recent years, the letters from 8the IRC have not been received until mid-June. 9 MR. KANG: Right. 10 AUDIENCE MEMBER: And July 1st is 11(indiscernible) so if we are waiting for evaluation on 12FY 21 rates -- 13 MR. KANG: Right. 14 AUDIENCE MEMBER: -- it feels that logic 15would preclude us from having an answer before July 1st 16on the RFP. 17 MR. KANG: Your current contracts will 18probably be extended a little bit. 19 AUDIENCE MEMBER: Okay. I had a second 20question on the Key Personnel. I apologize. Coming 21back to -- I did read and it does not say, technically, HUNT REPORTING COMPANY Court Reporting and Litigation Support Serving Maryland, Washington, and Virginia 410-766-HUNT (4868) 1-800-950-DEPO (3376) 90 1that the State Project Manager is approving our hires, 2but I think the confusion comes from the State Project 3Manager will notify the contractor in writing of the 4receipt or the denial for a specified time. So there 5is an implication that if we submit someone to replace 6-- if I need to replace somebody, that there is a 7chance for denial of that person. 8 MS. WALKER: And I believe that denial would 9be based on them not meeting the requirements of the 10RFP; that's what that means. 11 AUDIENCE MEMBER: Okay. Got it. Thank you. 12 AUDIENCE MEMBER: I have a question. And I 13apologize if this was already answered and I may have 14missed it. Can you clarify in the previous question 15and answer responses, question and response number 26, 16does this mean -- is this stating, in this current RFP, 17if want to add new programs, you're only able to 18respond to the RFP based on the current licensed 19programs; you're not able to request any new programs 20under your agency? 21 MS. WALKER: This RFP is for current HUNT REPORTING COMPANY Court Reporting and Litigation Support Serving Maryland, Washington, and Virginia 410-766-HUNT (4868) 1-800-950-DEPO (3376) 91 1providers and you are able to expand, yes. 2 AUDIENCE MEMBER: Okay. 3 MR. THOMAS: I need to let everyone know that 4when you submit your proposal and the Letter of Intent 5that goes through -- that comes to the Office of 6Licensing and Monitoring, it should be addressed to 7Helen Murray-Miller. She'll be your contact at OLM, 8Helen Murray-Miller. 9 MS. WALKER: We just had a question up front 10here. 11 MR. LABULE: Good afternoon. This is Joseph 12Labule with Second Family. We provide medically 13fragile services and we have nurses as employees. Are 14they considered Key Personnel? 15 MS. WALKER: Your nurses -- okay. So the Key 16Personnel under this RFP would be the Administrator, 17and then the QRTP, that's your nursing and licensed 18status, so if you're going to be a QRTP-certified 19provider then, yes, they would be considered Key 20Personnel. 21 MR. KANG: Hold on. You don't have to send HUNT REPORTING COMPANY Court Reporting and Litigation Support Serving Maryland, Washington, and Virginia 410-766-HUNT (4868) 1-800-950-DEPO (3376) 92 1the resumes for the nurses though. They're not 2technically Key Personnel. I mean, they're key to your 3project, but the only Key Personnel is the Certified 4Program Administrator. 5 AUDIENCE MEMBER: Not if you're a QRTP. It 6specifically says on page 77 -- 7 MS. WALKER: Right. 8 AUDIENCE MEMBER: -- that, "For QRTP 9providers, Offerors shall propose their registered or 10licensed nursing and clinical staff who provide care 11within the scope of their practice as Key Personnel." 12 MS. WALKER: Right. 13 AUDIENCE MEMBER: So that means all of my 14resumes, all the references, and Letters of Intent for 15my nurses, my clinicians, and my RCCPA. 16 MS. WALKER: Your Key Personnel, under the 17RFP, is the Contract -- the Administrator, and then if 18you are a QRTP (indiscernible) but as -- under the 19second frame of his question regarded a medically 20fragile program, and so they're not QRTP-certified. So 21your Key Personnel would be your Administrator. HUNT REPORTING COMPANY Court Reporting and Litigation Support Serving Maryland, Washington, and Virginia 410-766-HUNT (4868) 1-800-950-DEPO (3376) 93 1 MR. LABULE: I have another question. This 2relates to the MBE goal. For nonprofits, a lot of the 3funds go to pay salaries. We're not allowed to 4consider this towards the MBE goal? 5 MS. WALKER: I didn't hear you, sir. Could 6you say it one more time. 7 MR. LABULE: For nonprofits, a lot of the 8funds to pay salaries to staff. We're not allowed to 9consider that towards the MBE goal? 10 MS. WALKER: Well, the MBE goal is a 11requirement for any provider having 25 or more beds, 12and that comes from the Governor's Office of Small 13Business Administration. 14 MR. LABULE: Yeah, I know, but, as I said, 15for nonprofits, you know (indiscernible) so how can we 16be expected to meet five percent goals, I mean 17(indiscernible) are part of the MBE goal? 18 MS. WALKER: Well, Sandy, I can defer to you, 19but I believe the last response was as long as you're 20showing due diligence. 21 MS. JOHNSON: So nonprofits can no longer be HUNT REPORTING COMPANY Court Reporting and Litigation Support Serving Maryland, Washington, and Virginia 410-766-HUNT (4868) 1-800-950-DEPO (3376) 94 1certified as MBEs as of 2015. February of 2015, 2nonprofits can no longer be considered as certified 3MBEs. 4 MR. LABULE: Yeah, I mean, you know, we still 5have the five percent goal to meet, correct? 6 MS. JOHNSON: A nonprofit still has to meet 7the goal. That's correct. 8 MR. LABULE: Yeah. So my question is if I 9run out of funds (indiscernible) we pay salaries to 10staff, so in order to meet that five percent goal, can 11I consider the staff salaries as part of meeting that 12goal? (Indiscernible) might hurt the employees. 13 MS. JOHNSON: You must make a good faith 14effort to meet the five percent goal set 15(indiscernible) so if you're proposing beds of 25 or 16more, you're required to comply with the MBE. 17 MR. LABULE: Thank you. 18 MS. WALKER: Anymore questions? 19 (No response.) 20 MR. KANG: So if you want a written response 21to your questions, please give them to me in writing. HUNT REPORTING COMPANY Court Reporting and Litigation Support Serving Maryland, Washington, and Virginia 410-766-HUNT (4868) 1-800-950-DEPO (3376) 95 1So if some of the questions haven't been answered, 2please send them to me, because it's going to take time 3otherwise. And the question about the overnight ratio, 4we'll get that to you as soon as possible, next day or 5so. Other than that, thank you all for attending the 6pre-proposal conference. I hope everyone has a good 7day. 8 (Whereupon, at 12:40 p.m., the pre-proposal 9conference was concluded.) 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. HUNT REPORTING COMPANY Court Reporting and Litigation Support Serving Maryland, Washington, and Virginia 410-766-HUNT (4868) 1-800-950-DEPO (3376) CERTIFICATE OF NOTARY I, Deborah B. Gauthier, Notary Public, before whom the foregoing pre-proposal conference was held, do hereby certify that said pre-proposal conference is a true record of the proceedings; that I am neither counsel for, related to, nor employed by any of the parties to this action, nor financially or otherwise interested in the outcome of the action; and that the pre-proposal conference was reduced to typewriting by me or under my direction. This certification is expressly withdrawn upon the disassembly or photocopying of the foregoing transcript, including exhibits, unless disassembly or photocopying is done under the auspices of Hunt Reporting Company, and the signature and original seal is attached thereto. DEBORAH B. GAUTHIER, Notary Public in and for the State of Maryland My Commission Expires: October 17, 2019 HUNT REPORTING COMPANY Court Reporting and Litigation Support Serving Maryland, Washington, and Virginia 410-766-HUNT (4868) 1-800-950-DEPO (3376)