Peer to Peer Regional Meeting – Phoenix, January 2016
AVA held their first regional Peer-to-Peer meeting in Phoenix, Arizona on Thursday, January 28th, 2016.
It was an all-day meeting that gave Administrators a chance to engage in meaningful conversations with one another about the day-to-day management of their STOP funds. The participants were both seasoned and new Administrators, representing Nevada, Montana, Colorado, North Dakota, Minnesota, Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands.
The morning was spent discussing fiscal aspects such as funding strategies for the statutory set-asides, managing returned monies, and documenting reallocations, among other things. The afternoon was more programmatic and included topics like the challenges of drafting a close-out report for one fiscal year when you’ve been operating under multiple fiscal years simultaneously. Other topics included discussions on what states are doing with their PREA funds, implementation planning meetings, subgrantee monitoring challenges, handling red flag reports, etc. We shared resources and tracking tools that some states have developed to help in satisfying all the mandates of the STOP program.
The setting was very conducive to the all-inclusive, interactive discussions we were hoping to achieve and we’ve received very good feedback from those attending. The AVA Board is looking into logistics for future regional meetings and will have additional information at the AVA Annual Meeting in Chicago on March 29, 2016.
Attending the first Peer-to- Peer Meeting (pictured left to right) is Debbie Tanaka (NV);Kathy Holland (CO), Monica Crisostomo and Juan Cruz (N.Mariana Islands), Dorene Whitworth, ExecutiveDirector of AVA; Tina Chamberlain (MT), Cecilia Miller (MN), Deanna Askew (ND), and Dwain Sanchez (Guam).