City cuts human services

The Spokane City Council approved the recommendation of the Human Services Advisory Board on Monday night and denied funding to two major programs for the city’s poor and homeless based on technicalities.

In a 4-2 vote, the council voted to distribute a little more than $767,000 – $350,000 less than last year – among all 48 programs that correctly applied for funding. Council members hoped to find money elsewhere for two agencies that were denied funding because of minor mistakes in applying for city grants.

A $225,000 request by the Community Health Association of Spokane for its dental health, behavioral health and pharmacy programs was rejected because its application did not include the resume of Peg Hopkins, executive director of the clinics for the last 10 years.

The advisory board also rejected a $60,000 request by the YWCA for its Homeless Children’s Educational Resource Program because the agency failed to include a job description in its application.

“The bottom line is we have to get this money for the services,” said Hopkins, who added that the alternative is elimination of the programs she called critical to the health care of Spokane’s neediest citizens. “If we can’t come up with this money, those services go away.”

Hopkins said CHAS received $124,000 for its programs last year, including money for its drug prescription subsidies. She said the clinics do not have money in reserve to keep these programs going.

Four other agencies were denied city funding because of errors in their applications, but were not represented Monday. They are: City Gate Ministries, East Central Community Organization, Holy Family Adult Day Centers and Mid-City Concerns.

Though council members praised the advisory board for having to make “the tough decisions,” YWCA executive director Monica Walters said that is exactly what was not done. She excoriated the City Council for its lack of leadership in accepting a recommendation based on process rather than priority.

“This demonstrates a lack of leadership if the City Council does not step in,” Walters said. “We brag about being one of the top 100 places for kids in the U.S., but the most vulnerable children we have are homeless kids, and we’ve cut them out in the city’s budget.”

She said the council’s decision would keep more than 500 homeless children from receiving services for homeless children, including an after-school program that provides afternoon snacks.

“You are going to tell a first-grader who is hungry that she is not going to have food after school,” she said.

Walters has written Mayor Dennis Hession, council President Joe Shogan and advisory board chairwoman Becky Bishop to protest the decision.

Hopkins said the cuts would burden the city’s police and fire departments when they respond to emergency calls from people denied their medications.

The CHAS clinics are the county’s largest primary health care provider of uninsured patients. One of every six uninsured people in the county gets health care at CHAS, and as many as 10,000 of its 38,000 patients are on Medicaid, the state and federal health insurance program for the poor. It is also the city’s only drop-in dental clinic for the poor.

“The price of health care shouldn’t be your dignity, and that is the question here.” Hopkins said. “We are consciously going to throw thousands of people into crisis.”

In the end, only two council members, Brad Stark and Bob Apple, voted against the advisory board’s recommendations, and they did so from totally different perspectives.

Stark took exception to Councilwoman Mary Verner, who said, “If we fail to fund human services, we fail as a city.” She promised to try to find additional funds from her vantage on the finance committee.

But Stark found it “offensive to say we are going to magically find” money for human services, considering the 150 job cuts more than a year ago and a 20 percent utility tax, among the state’s highest.

“This budget was not balanced on the back of human services,” Stark said. “It was balanced on the back of the taxpayers.”

To which Apple rejoined that human services are “a basic common need we have an obligation to support.”