Street roots
3
April 27, 2012
Portland Children's Levy first budget reductions cut deep
BY AM ANDA WALDROUPE
STAFF WRITER
serve minority and ethnic children. They are
also, Kafoury says, good programs.
“The vast majority of these programs have
proven effective,” Kafoury says.
Young says that programs with qualitative
data to back up their successes, such as
Head Start programs, were somewhat
prioritized from deep cuts.
Mary Gay Broderick, the Levy’s
spokesperson, says issues of under
performance were “looked at while making
the deductions,” and Children’s Levy staff
recommend that the allocation committee
cut between five and 15 percent of an
agency’s Levy funding depending on “the
severity of the issues.” For example, Levy
staff found that NAYA’s foster care services
fell short of meeting the 104 hours of case
management pledged to each foster child.
According to the Levy’s assessment, only
The $308,992 in funding for Janus Youth’s
Metamorphosis program was also
eliminated. The program provided peer-
delivered services to homeless youth with
long-standing drug and alcohol addictions
issues.
“It was depressing,” says Kathy Oliver, the
executive director of homeless youth agency
Outside In. “I know the city has less money
and has to make hard choices, but boy, the
safety net just shrunk.”
The Metamorphosis program provides all
of the mental health and substance abuse
treatment to homeless youth.
“It’s hard to imagine providing services for
a homeless youth population without alcohol
and drug treatment services and mental
health services,” Oliver says. “The research
shows that just providing homeless youth
with a place to live and a job is ineffective if
or the first time in its history, the
Portland Children’s Levy has cut
funding to children’s programs — the
byproduct of declining property tax
revenues. The drastic measures taken by the
Levy’s allocation committee have sent
ripples of shock and worry throughout the
provider community.
I cried,” says County Commissioner
Deborah Kafoury, a member of the Levy’s
allocation committee. “These are among the
most painful cuts I’ve made in my entire
public career. We were making incredibly
deep cuts to incredibly successful programs.”
Julie Young, a children’s advocate and
community member of the Levy’s allocation
committee, says children will be directly
effected.
“We know that quality programs generally
cost more money. It will be a hard
challenge,” Young says. “There will be more
waiting lists. It will mean that some
programs that serve children will have to do
more with less. Some children will not be
served as well.”
The levy’s budget is 27 percent less than
last year, equating to a $3.5 million shortfall.
The allocation committee, which is
responsible for doling out the Levy’s funds,
met twice in late April to decide this year’s
funding for after-school, early childhood and
child-abuse prevention programs for
vulnerable and low-income children.
None of the 76 Levy-funded programs
remained unscathed.
The largest cuts were made to agencies
serving minority communities, the biggest
being a 49.5 percent cut to Hacienda CDC’s
Portland Ninos program, — a $88,068 cut
from an original $177,966 budget.
The program works to reduce academic
half received that amount.
“We feel pretty devastated,” says Nicole
Maher, NAYA’s executive director. She says
the cuts will directly impact 100 Native
American youth, and that NAYA will have to
decrease services and possibly make layoffs
as a result.
Maher bristles at the staff’s suggestion to
reduce funding because of under
performance. “We did experience some
challenges when we first started the
program,” she says. “We had repeated
misunderstanding with their staff on what
they were looking for.”
Maher says NAYA’s most recent reports
their drug and alcohol issues are not dealt
with.”
Oliver says representatives of the
homeless youth continuum are meeting with
county commissioners this week to see if the
county can pitch in funding. “We’ll see,” she
says. “I’m actually quite hopeful...the county
funds other pieces of this system.”
Also eliminated was $67,911 in funding for
the Community Cycling Center’s Bike Club
program. The program serves fourth and
fifth graders from low-income families. It’s
an after school program where kids learn
how to repair and safely ride bikes. At the
end of the 12-week course, children are given
and h e alth d isp a ritie s am ong L atino and
s h o w t h a t NAYA w a s m e e tin g o r e x c e e d in g
th e refu rb ish e d bike th e y u sed d u rin g th e
immigrant children ages five and under. The
program funds home visits to monitor the
child’s health, offers activities to the children
that prepare them for kindergarten, and also
engages parents in weekly support groups
and educational workshops.
The second largest cut was a 39.7 percent
cut to the foster care services provided by
the Native American Youth Family Center
(NAYA), or $183,167 from a total $461,529
budget. The agency’s foster care services
support Native American children in the
foster care system from birth to age 24, and
provides case management and culturally
appropriate services, and recruits foster
families amd helps biological families
reunite, among other services.
Other cuts to agencies such as Morrison
Child and Family Services, IRCO, Impact
Northwest, and Metropolitan Family
Services most often ranged between 15 and
30 percent.
“There was nothing good about this whole
process,” Young says.
Some providers have cried foul that the
cuts disproportionately affect minorities.
Kafoury and others respond that the
majority of agencies funded by the Levy
benchmarks.
“It’s a sad example of people who say they
care about equity,” Maher says. “When it
comes to fund decisions, we still have a long
way to go.”
Other staff recommendations include
reducing non-culturally specific programs by
5 percent, and agencies that served less than
39 percent of East Portland children by 5
percent.
But the committee ended up not
necessarily adopting staff recommendations.
Some level of under performance is expected
when agencies work with difficult-to-work-
with populations.
“It’s a very tough population,” Broderick
says. “They’re poor. They’re disenfranchised.
They’re disengaged. A lot of them are very
mobile, and caseworkers can’t find them. It’s
a host of societal ills and problems that they
are dealing with on a massive level.”
A dozen programs saw their Levy funding
completely eliminated.
One of the largest funding eliminations
was to Big Brother Big Sisters’ Project Hope
program, which received $121,000 from the
Children’s Levy. The program matches adult
mentors with youth in foster care.
class.
“It’s also an opportunity for them to build
confidence and form new friendships,” says
Melinda Musser, the Community Cycling
Center’s spokesperson. “It’s much more
than getting a bike.”
The program has been funded by the
Children’s Levy since 2005, and according to
the Community Cycling Center’s website,
more than 1,000 children have participated.
A blog post on the Center’s website
discussing the cut said, “it represents the
loss of one piece of the larger solution of
promoting physical activity and ensuring kids
from low-income families have a reliable way
to get to school.”
The agency is currently looking into
alternative funding streams, including private
fundraising.
It’s possible that many agencies will ask
for funding from the city or the county to
make up for the loss. But given the cuts both
governments are expecting to make to their
budgets, such requests will face even more of
an uphill battle.
“It’s incredibly difficult,” Kafoury says.
Both Oliver and Maher are doubtful that
private funding can fill the funding gap.
F
“There was nothing good about this whole process."
— JULIE YO U N G
C H IL D R E N 'S L E V Y A L L O C A T IO N C O M M IT T E E
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“That’s a hard row to hoe these days,” Oliver
says. “Foundation funding is generally one
time only.”
A reason programming cuts were so steep
is because the levy caps administrative costs
at 5 percent. The allocation committee
couldn’t consider “cutting fat off the bone,”
Kafoury says, because there hardly is any.
The reason the Levy lost a quarter of its
budget is tied directly to the recession, and
Portland’s property taxes.
The Portland Children’s Levy, like all
levies, gets its budget from property taxes —
a 40 cent levy per $1,000 of assessed value.
If property values go down, as they have
since the beginning of the recession, so do
property taxes.
Compounding the decline of property
values is a dynamic unique to Oregon’s
property tax and levy system: compression.
Oregon’s Measures 5 and 50, passed in
the early 1990s, limits property taxes to no
more than $10 per $1,000 of assessed real
estate value each year. If there are numerous
levies seeking revenue through property
taxes, the amount those levies generate
shrinks, or compresses, because the amount
of money generated through property taxes
remains finite.
“It’s catching up to us,” Broderick says.
“We were all absolutely unprepared for
what has happened with property taxes in
Portland,” Young says.
It’s expected to get worse. The library
district’s levy is up for renewal during the
May 15 primary and November general
election. If the levy passes, Broderick
estimates that the Children Levy’s budget
would decrease by another $1 million, simply
because of compression.
Could the Levy have avoided making such
drastic cuts? The Levy does not have a
reserve or “rainy day” fund, something that
K afoury and o th e rs th in k should p ossible be
c re a te d in th e fu tu re —especially if th e
recession .continues and property values
don’t begin increasing.
“Just in case,” Kafoury says.
But the idea of a “rainy day fund” rankles
some.
“In retrospect, it would have wise,
perhaps,” Young says.
But she and Broderick say that it would be
inappropriate to stash money away when it
could be used to serve children. “These are
tax dollars,” Broderick says. “We want to get
them out the door as quickly as possible to
serve as many children and families as we
can.”
The Portland Children’s Levy was created
in 2002 and re-approved by a large margin in
2008. The Children’s Levy will be up for
renewal next year. Broderick says that the
Levy’s current funding will expire on July 30,
2014. City Commissioner Dan Saltzman, who
champions the Levy, has publicly said he will
pursue renewing the Levy again. He did not
return a call from Street Roots for comment.
The Children’s Levy will make a
presentation to the Multnomah County
board of commissioners on May 17.
SEASONS