ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, December 4, 1995 TAG: 9512050020
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DAN CASEY STAFF WRITER
NOTE: Below
ROANOKE MAY PUT the anti-poverty agency on an equal footing with other service groups in the competition for funds. TAP sees the proposal as a threat.
Roanoke city administration is considering changing a procedure used to fund Total Action Against Poverty in a way that may force the community action agency to compete for funding with other human-service providers.
Although council has not yet taken up the proposal, TAP's board of directors last week launched a pre-emptive strike against it. Calling the idea a "quantum leap backward," the board said it threatens future city funding for TAP at a time when federal and state funds are becoming increasingly scarce.
TAP, which recently celebrated its 30th anniversary, served more than 5,000 underprivileged children and adults in 1,220 Roanoke families last year, said Ted Edlich, its executive director.
With the change, "the effect is, it lessens TAP's connection with the city of Roanoke, and it lessens the [city's] emphasis on serving low-income populations," Edlich said. "And in the long term it destabilizes the funding support for TAP programs."
City officials, however, said the proposal would put TAP on a "level playing field" with other human service agencies by holding TAP to the same accountability standards the others now meet. Ultimately, it could save the city from spending money on human service programs that duplicate each other.
Edlich said he was first informed of the issue in a Nov. 21 meeting with city Human Development Director Glenn Radcliffe. The organization's board, a blue-ribbon panel of local neighborhood and business leaders, registered strong objections to a funding change in a Nov. 28 letter to council members.
The potential change has to do with the way the city funds TAP. Unlike other social service providers the city issues grants to, TAP alone is guaranteed funding as a "line item" in the city budget.
TAP received $201,000 from City Council this year. That is about 3 percent of the $5.9 million TAP spent directly in Roanoke on programs providing job training, literacy, shelter for the homeless, anti-drug education, family counseling and youth summer jobs for some of the city's most needy residents. The majority of its funding comes from the federal and state governments.
But some 26 smaller human service agencies - including West End Center, the Salvation Army and the Child Health Investment Partnership - get their city funding from a pool of money distributed annually by the council-appointed Citizens Services Committee.
The committee annually evaluates requests from those agencies before deciding how to divvy up the pool. Unlike TAP, each of those agencies must complete performance audits that show funding in the previous year was spent wisely.
City Manager Bob Herbert said he is likely to recommend that TAP seek its annual grant the same way. City Councilman William White said he endorses the idea. The majority of City Council was attending a National League of Cities convention in Phoenix and could not be reached Friday.
"This is not a question about TAP. This is a question about the use of city funds," Herbert said Friday. "I've been concerned that we're sending money out without any requirement for how the money is being used or accountability of how it's being used."
He said he has never had any indication that TAP spent city taxpayer money unwisely or improperly.
Still, "it's really wrong, fiscally, for TAP to be a line item in our budget," White said. "We need experts [on the Citizens Services Committee] to make sure this money's being well spent. ... TAP could come out even stronger."
However, White added, TAP should have been informed of the change long before last week.
Until the mid-1980s, TAP received its money in the same way as the other agencies. But the agency was changed to a budget item during former City Manager Bern Ewert's final year.
The switch gave TAP a stable source of local funds, which aided in planning. Since then, other local governments, including Salem and Roanoke County, have given TAP funds in the same way.
Edlich said the agency is willing to undergo any audit Herbert or City Council desires. As it is, TAP reports to City Council each December on its annual accomplishments. Its next report is due Dec. 11.
But Edlich fears that the other governments that fund TAP as line items in their budgets will follow suit. And the organization successfully uses the line-item funding in pitching charitable foundations for additional contributions, he said.
"It's that uncertainty that looms in everybody's minds that's causing a degree of unrest at this point," said Monty Plymale, southwestern regional president of Central Fidelity Bank and a vice president of TAP's governing board.
"If you lose line-item status, you lose some degree of control over your budget in terms of what your revenue stream should be."
TAP's reach stretches far beyond the Roanoke Valley. Its programs also serve residents in Craig, Botetourt and Rockbridge counties and in the Alleghany Highlands. TAP's overall annual budget is about $10 million.
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