SEQUIM — The Boys & Girls Clubs of the Olympic Peninsula board president expressed concerns about having enough money to continue the clubs’ program to help high-risk teens after the City Council on Monday night offered less in health and human services funding as it approved a 2011 budget.
Jerry Sinn said he fears that the city, through United Way of Clallam County, will designate even less to the agency, which operates units in Sequim and Port Angeles, and its teen program.
The council voted Monday night to allocate a minimum of $10,000 each to the Boys & Girls Clubs, the Sequim Senior Activity Center and the Dungeness Valley Health and Wellness Clinic.
In a 5-2 vote, the council approved the $18.6 million budget.
The budget, which does not propose furloughs or layoffs of city staff, is balanced and is planned to avoid spending down reserves and the fund balance, according to City Manager Steve Burkett.
Before the budget vote, attempts by some council members were rejected to spare funding for the clubs, which in 2007 and 2009 received $100,000 from the city and $60,000 in 2009 and this year.
Voting against the 2011 budget plan were council members Don Hall and Erik Erichsen.
Both voiced issues with health and human services funding decisions.
The council is expected to vote Monday on a proposal to assign United Way to allocate $40,000.
That led the Boys & Girls Clubs president to wonder how much less the clubs might receive.
“Obviously, it’s going to be something less than the $60,000 we got in 2010,” Sinn said.
“We really don’t know yet what we will do.”
Sinn said the clubs’ options included applying for grants to offset the loss of city funding.
“Sure, it will affect the club,” he said, adding that it costs about $100,000 to run the teen program that helps youths that otherwise might be left out on the streets homeless and hungry.
“We have to find new funds to replace what was lost, so it’s a problem,” he said.
Several motions failed Monday night, including those to increase funding for the clubs and an attempt to put the decision-making for future health and human services dollars in the hands of the council instead of United Way.
The council voted 5-2 against allowing the council to determine the annual funding, with council members Hall and Ted Miller favoring city determination.
Council member Bill Huizinga pressed the council to raise health and human services funding to $100,000, saying it could be pulled from the city’s $1.2 million in reserve funds without hurting budgeting.
“I think it behooves us, and it should define us that we really support the teen club,” Huizinga said, calling for the city granting at least $60,000 to the Boys and Girls Clubs.
At the other end of the debate was council member Susan Lorenzen, who said that it has been the council’s position in the past three years to cut back on funding to the clubs, expecting the agency to become self-sufficient without city dollars.
The council’s budget action was delayed two weeks, once by heavy snows, then by a citywide blackout caused when a tree hit power lines in Blyn.
As part of its budget-related actions, the council a week ago Monday voted 5-2, with council members Erichsen and Lorenzen opposed, to raise the sewer service rate 2 percent to raise $130,000 to help pay the debt for the city’s newly expanded $11 million water reclamation facility.
The council also approved 6-1, with Erichsen voting against, an ordinance relating to utility rate reductions for indigents. Proposed is $31,000 to fund the rate reductions.
After Lorenzen said she wanted public rental of Guy Cole Community Center to be “a little more rentable,” the council voted 4-3 to lower the fees and raise the kitchen cleaning deposit to $125 a day at the center, with Mayor Ken Hays and council members Hall and Laura Dubois voting against.
Fees were approved at $50 for one to four hours of use by nonprofit groups and $100 for five or more hours a day.
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Jeff Chew can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at jeff.chew@peninsuladailynews.com.
