“Our Passion for our Work Cannot Pay the Bills”: President Roderick L. Jones Testifies on City’s Late Payments

Thank you to Chairs Won and Stevens, Speaker Adams, and the New York City
Council Committees on Contracts and Children and Youth for the opportunity t
testify today. My name is Roderick Jones and I am the President of Goddard
Riverside, a settlement house working with over 20,000 New Yorkers a year from
early childhood through older adulthood to strive towards a fair and just society
where all people can make choices that lead to better lives for themselves and
their families.

Goddard, and our sister organization, the Stanley Isaacs Neighborhood Center,
employ approximately 1,000 human services workers who dedicate their days to
keeping New Yorkers in their homes, feeding homebound older adults, creating
career pathways for youth, engaging street homeless neighbors and much more.
Many often say that budgets are a statement of our city’s values. From 3-K and
Pre-K to older adult programming, supportive housing to financial
empowerment and more, the city partners with nonprofit providers to deliver
services for the most vulnerable New Yorkers. Paying one’s bills on time is a core
tenet of sound budgeting practices. Yet the City has failed to pay its human
services providers on time for its contracts, putting our nonprofits at risk of
closing doors and the communities we serve at risk of losing the services they
need to grow and prosper.

We appreciate the administration’s work to clear over $6 billion in backlogged
payments and the Council’s advocacy to elevate the struggles that nonprofit
providers like Goddard have faced in getting paid for contracted services. But
more must be done to end the chronic problems of delayed contract
registrations and payments.

Just this year, Goddard has experienced $15 million in delays on payments for our contracted services. Of all our city contracts, we have experienced the most delays in DYCD contracts. Goddard staff serve over 4,000 young people across our DYCD programs, including afterschool, summer programs, college readiness and more.

Seven of our FY24 and FY25 DYCD contracts have been impacted by significant
delays, however, with only two resolved as of April 2025. This leaves five large
contracts providing youth employment, afterschool and summer programming
for our city’s young people still experiencing reimbursement delays for work
rendered:

• Summer Rising: Our Beacon Summer Program provides academic,
  recreational, performing arts and social programming to approximately
  200 children and youth, including 50+ youth employment participants. As
  of April 2025, our ability to submit billing on our FY24 Summer Rising
  contract is still held up by an amendment we cannot resolve in Passport
  without agency support. Further, our FY25 contract is not showing up at all
  in Passport with mere months left before Summer Rising programming is
  scheduled to start for this year.
• Beacon: Goddard and Isaacs operate three of the 91 Beacon sites citywide.
  Through our Beacon program, we provide afterschool programming for
  over 1,000 children across elementary, middle and high school. This
  programming features performance and visual arts, sports, STEM, one to
  one counseling and test prep for high school applications, community
  service projects and college and career readiness. We are still working with
  DYCD staff to submit and reconcile final billings for our FY24 contract.
• Advance and Earn: Isaacs Center’s Advance and Earn programming offers
  jobs and skills training for out of school, out of work aspiring chefs, ages 18
  24 to help participants grow leadership and interpersonal skills needed for
  success in the restaurant industry. Advance and Earn graduates also staff
  our Soup’s Up program, providing home-delivered meals to seniors and
  other New Yorkers experiencing food insecurity. Our FY24 contract
  remains stalled, with our team unable to review the award letter in
  Passport or submit final invoices due to an unapproved budget on the
  agency side. Further, Passport’s records for funding for our FY25 contract
  does not line up with the amounts shown in DYCD Connect or in our
  internal records, preventing us from submitting budgets or billing for the
  full amount.

Throughout today, you will hear testimony similar to ours, with many nonprofits
forced to take out extra lines of credit, cut vital programming, or undergo
eviction from their sites due to months and years of delayed contract
registrations and payments for services. Goddard has provided over $1 million in
unreimbursed services for our youth community members and told DYCD this
month we will be unable to provide services beyond the next 30 days without
financial relief. In addition, providers are often forced to make risky choices such
as starting work without a registered contract and needed payments, or delays
in starting the contract. For Goddard, we cannot afford to start work on the next
Advance and Earn contract due to the weight of the delayed payments on our
FY24 contract. These types of choices force providers to choose between
delaying services to communities in need or payments to the staff who provide
these vital programs. With the ongoing affordability crisis facing New Yorkers,
these are not choices our human services sector, or the communities it serves,
should be forced to make.

Goddard supports the passage of Introductions 1247, 1248 and 1249, sponsored
by Speaker Adams and Chair Brannan. In particular, Introduction 1247 would
require the promulgation of rules for the immediate disbursement of 80% of a
given fiscal year’s contract funds for contracts with nonprofits upon registration
by the comptroller and upon the start of each subsequent fiscal year. This would
help us start working on contracted services knowing that we will receive
payment quickly upon contract registration. The passage of these bills, and
promulgation of the related rules, must also be accompanied with sufficient
budgeting for the needed full-time staff in the proposed department of contract
services to ensure the agency is able to register contracts and process payments
in a timely fashion.

I also strongly recommend the City take and adapt lessons from the federal
procurement process. The federal government’s uniform guidance for federal
awards has effectively streamlined administrative processes, for federal contracts
to nonprofits, ensuring award dollars are focused on services and reducing the
administrative burden on vendors without decreasing accountability. This can
include providing a line of credit right at the beginning of a contract, simplified
reporting requirements, and more.

We appreciate the need for reporting and compliance mechanisms to ensure
the city’s funds are going towards community needs. But as providers, our
passion for our work cannot pay the bills. In a city that relies so heavily on
nonprofits to offer key programs to New Yorkers, investing in our human services
providers includes paying us on time and ensuring we can dedicate the majority
of our time to providing quality services to those most in need. I thank you for
the opportunity to testify and look forward to working with you further towards
these goals.