ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, March 29, 1997 TAG: 9703310058
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARY BISHOP THE ROANOKE TIMES
Nonprofit groups unhappy with their allocation of federal money will likely get more only at another group's expense.
Roanokers have five weeks to press the city for more federal money for nonprofit organizations, but city budget handlers caution there's not much room for maneuvering.
Right now, says Assistant City Manager Jim Ritchie, the city is within $19,000 of the maximum percentage of Community Development Block Grant money it can spend on human services next fiscal year. That is as close as the city likes to get, because projects often come in over budget and officials try to allow for some slack.
So unless residents can persuade budget committees or City Council to shift money from one social service agency to another, city workers don't offer much hope.
Advocates of the West End Center, for example, have criticized the city for recommending the Roanoke City Boxing Association's youth program receive $50,700 when after-school programs for children in four poor neighborhoods are set to receive only $29,000. Volunteers at the West End Center, the best-known youth center in the city, intend to speak up loudly about it at a May 5 budget hearing before City Council.
Council member Jim Trout, a former amateur boxer, heads the boxing association.
Ritchie, chairman of the city's budget preparation committee, noted Friday that the after-school proposal from West End Center, St.John's Episcopal Church, the YMCA Family Center and the Presbyterian Community Center was the only new program recommended by his committee to receive money next fiscal year. Budget workers said the boxing association received money last year.
Ritchie said budget committees will consider all that was said at Thursday night's budget hearing and all other public comments. "It's not a finished product," he said of the budget.
He said some residents seem to think that the $256,000 in block grant money the city plans to spend for human services next fiscal year is all the money targeted for needy causes. Last year, Ritchie said, besides the city's spending for its own social service programs, an additional $409,000 from the city's general fund was budgeted for human services. Recipients included the West End Center, the Salvation Army and the Council of Community Services. The 1997-98 general fund budget is not ready for release but it, too, will include human services items.
Ritchie, the city's former human development director, said that until the last few years the city spent the federal block grant money mostly for housing and construction projects. City documents show that human services programs in 1990 received about $50,000 from the block grants, a fifth of the amount earmarked for next year.
Years ago, however, agencies often received grants directly from federal departments. Ritchie said as Congress began shrinking the block grants and channeling them through cities, competition among nonprofits has tightened.
Ritchie and two city grants officers, Lori Spencer and Frank Baratta, said the city prefers to give block grant human services money to start projects and encourages them to find other money sources to keep going. Ritchie said too many agencies are becoming too dependent on federal dollars.
"This is very undependable funding," he said.
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