Article 17 Community Services: Human Service Agency Funding

From: Alisa Brewer
Sent: Wednesday, May 30, 2007 10:28 AM
To: Select Board; Finance Committee
Cc: Town Meeting Coordinating Committee
Subject: Survival Center Press Conference Noon Wednesday May 30, 2007?

http://www.dailyhampshiregazette.com

Daily Hampshire Gazette, Wednesday May 30, 2007

Survival Center pushes for funding
By MARY CAREY Staff Writer

AMHERST - The Amherst Survival Center is in the spotlight again. It's
the site of a press conference today on human service funding and the
subject of a coming Town Meeting petition article requesting funding
for a clinical social worker to work there part-time.

Members of the center's board of directors, its Executive Director
Cheryl Zoll and Town Meeting member Isaac BenEzra will be at the noon
press conference at the 1200 North Pleasant St. food and clothing
distribution and drop-in center. Their subject is looming cuts in the
town's human services budget.

Town Meeting likely will try to sort through four competing
recommendations for funding at its sixth session on Thursday. Advocates
of spending more on human services planned to make their case today
that the town shouldn't cut back human service funding for residents
who are struggling already.

"To us it would have devastating effects," Ruth Wade, president of the
center's board of directors, said of a proposed reduction in funding
for human service agencies from $142,000 to $25,000.

Last year, the town contributed $33,000 to the Survival Center alone.

Zoll said the cut "would be hitting us at a time when we also have a
mandate to grow and change. We would have to cut around the edges."
Staff training, for example, likely would have to be cut.

"Another thing that would fall by the wayside are field trips," Zoll
said. "They're very modest, like going to a movie, but they mean a lot
to some people who never leave Amherst."

The $25,000 that the Finance Committee recommends spending this year
would be split among the center and other agencies such as Big Brother
Big Sister program, Family Outreach of Amherst, Center for New
Americans, Men's Resource Center, Not Bread Alone and University of
Massachusetts Commuter Services.

The Select Board recommends raising the Finance Committee's recommended figure by another $31,000.

"Even with a cut of 'only 85,000,' as the Select Board is recommending,
hundreds of residents will be adversely affected," board members wrote
in their report to Town Meeting.

The town's Community Development Committee, for its part, is requesting
$114,450 in funding for human services, while BenEzra has prepared a
motion asking Town Meeting to fund the full $142,000 contributed last
year.

The rules of Town Meeting this year, as outlined by Moderator Harrison
Gregg, require members seeking more funding for certain line items to
explain where the money would come from.

But BenEzra said he would not suggest where to find the money. That's
for budget writers to figure out, BenEzra said. "To ask the people who
are being cut by over 80 percent where is the money going to come from
begs the question of where the money is."

Meanwhile, Jon Nelms, a Survival Center client, is seeking to have Town
Meeting spend $9,000 to hire a part-time clinical social worker at the
center. Nelms was among clients whose criticisms of the center last
summer eventually led to wholesale changes there, including the
retirement of longtime Director Evangeline Westcott.

Since then, the center's board hired Zoll and is in the process of
hiring two other staff members and Zoll has instituted new programs,
including an open mic night. Things are going "extremely well "at the
center, Wade said, but a social worker would be a welcome addition.

"We've felt the need for a social worker. It's been a priority," she
said.

But if the $9,000 Nelms is suggesting to hire a social worker were to
come out of the $33,000 Wade and others are hoping the Survival Center
will receive, it would still amount to a cut from last year, Wade said.

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