Two weeks from now, the Portland City Council will have a choice to make: maintain $90,000 in vouchers that make child care available to low-income and vulnerable families, or reallocate a portion of that fund to help a teen shelter and an outreach service for the homeless.
“It’s a difficult decision,” said City Manager Jon Jennings, who proposed reducing funding for the child care vouchers. “We have a very limited pot of money.”
Every year, the council sets a budget for spending federal money, known as Community Development Block Grants, designed to help low-income people. Routinely, requests from nonprofit groups and social service agencies exceed the available funding.
This year is no different. The city received more than $3.5 million in funding requests, but has only about $1.7 million available.
Each application is evaluated according to policies established by the City Council. Last year, the council voted 7-0 to set aside $90,000 for vouchers to the Catherine Morrill Day Nursery, along with $150,000 for community policing.
Jennings broke with the allocation committee and reallocated $40,000 to the Joe Kreisler Teen Shelter and the Milestone Foundation’s Homeless Outreach and Mobile Engagement – or HOME – Team, which gets incapacitated homeless people off the streets and gives them a place to get sober and clean.
He also added $101,000 to the development budget for handicapped-accessible curbs and $13,500 for the Libbytown Community Gardens.
Both the HOME Team and the teen shelter received higher scores by the city’s allocation committee, according to a memo to the council. Milestone had requested $94,000 for its HOME Team and Preble Street had requested $30,000 for the teen shelter, but neither received funding from the allocation committee.
The reallocation of the child care money, along with other adjustments, would bring the HOME Team’s funding up to a little more than $54,000 and the teen shelter to $15,000, which is about half of their original requests.
“The allocation committee supports all of the city manager’s recommendations,” said Maxwell Chikuta, who chaired the four-member committee.
During a 30-minute public hearing, representatives from both the Milestone Foundation and the Catherine Morrill asked councilors to fund their programs.
Bob Fowler, executive director of the Milestone Foundation, said there are economic and humanitarian reasons to support the program. He said the program saves the city $200,000 a year and reduces call volumes for police and paramedics.
“These are our fellow human beings,” Fowler said of the clients assisted by Milestone, one of the only shelters in the state to admit inebriated people. “The HOME Team really provides a unique service for people who society sometimes sees as no longer human.”
Donna Yellen, chief program officer of Preble Street, a nonprofit that runs a day shelter and soup kitchen, said the city funding is needed especially since other resources are dwindling.
“More than ever we are looked at as an agency people come to as a last resort,” she said.
On the other side was the Catherine Morrill Day Nursery.
Michelle Belanger, the nursery’s associate director of youth and family outreach, said the vouchers allow teenage mothers to finish school and low-income parents to look for jobs, which she said are not allowed with state child care vouchers.
“If families do not have child care, they cannot work or go to necessary treatment programs for their mental health or addiction,” Belanger said.
She noted that the council approved the set-aside last fall after extensive debate. “It was a long process last fall evaluating this, and that’s why it was determined by the committee that child care needs to be prioritized.”
After the meeting, Belanger said the voucher program had helped about 70 children.
The Bayside Neighborhood Association threw its support behind the HOME Team. Steve Hirshon, the group’s president, said the service is invaluable to the neighborhood, since it is the site of a cluster of social services.
“We see the work of the HOME Team every day in our community,” said Hirshon, who pushed the council to look for other funding sources for deserving programs. “There needs to be some other kind of public-private partnership that would allow more programs to be fully funded.”
Mayor Ethan Strimling recused himself from the CDBG process, since he formerly worked as the executive director of LearningWorks, a West End nonprofit that helps low-income people, immigrants and at-risk youth. The agency received $43,000 in grant funding.
The council will vote on the spending plan on March 28, after holding another public hearing.
Randy Billings can be reached at 791-6346 or at:
Twitter: randybillings
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