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Managing Editor SPRINGFIELD Open Pantry Community Services must close a $400,000 deficit or face "severe service cuts," according to the organization's executive director Kevin Noonan. Noonan told his board on April 7 that unless the organization received "an immediate influx of funds" he would have to cut services starting April 21. In an interview with Reminder Publications last week, Noonan the organization doesn't have the money to meets its payroll. In 2007, the 33-year-old agency served 102,232 prepared meals at its Loaves & Fishes Community Kitchen; provided groceries for over 27,235 people, half of them children, through its Emergency Food Pantry; and made over 2,400 holiday meals at the High School of Commerce. In addition, the organization provided case management services to over 1,269 homeless people; shelter for 42 young mothers and 50 children at its Teen Living program, 29 families and nearly 70 children at its Jefferson Avenue Shelter and sober housing for 11 women and five men in two other programs. Considering Springfield has the sixth highest rate of child poverty in the nation among cities of 85,000 people and higher, Noonan said these services are vital. He does think a successor agency will step forward to fill in the service gap if the Open Pantry must cut back. The Open Pantry does receive $144,000 for the feeding programs, but Noonan said, "I'm not embarrassed to say we've been under-funded for years." Noonan said this chronic under-funding was remedied by borrowing money against the agency's building on State Street, but area banks are no longer allowing the practice. The reason for the current deficit is the $400,000 missing from the state the organization used to receive. Open Pantry received $400,843 from line item 4406-3000 during FY 2007 but has not received those funds during the current FY 2008 budget. The line item reads, "For the homelessness program to assist individuals who are homeless or in danger of becoming homeless, including assistance to organizations which provide food, shelter, housing search and limited related services to the homeless and indigent; provided further, that no organization providing services to the homeless shall receive less than an average per bed/per night rate of $12.92; provided further, that the department may allocate funds to other agencies for the purposes of this program; provided further, that organizations which received funding in fiscal year 2007, including funds received in item 1599-1005 in chapter 42 of the acts of 2007, shall receive at least the same amount in fiscal year 2008, and that organizations which received funds through this item in fiscal year 2007 shall receive not less than that same percentage share of this appropriation in fiscal year 2008 (emphasis added). Noonan believes on how the line items reads the Open Pantry should receive the funding, but he called the language "quirky" and subject to politics. The Open Pantry had received $418,000 in funding when it operated The Warming Place, the homeless shelter that was forced out of the York Street Jail building and never relocated. The Department of Transitional Assistance cancelled the contract in what Noonan called "an unfair process." Now help for the Open Pantry is in the hands of the public and the Legislature. Noonan is not only asking the public to help with contributions, but also to contact their state representatives and senators and appeal for funding in the next supplemental budget. Noonan said that some legislators have been very responsive to the organization's plight while others haven't. "I've been showing up at the State House for the last 10 months shuffling around with my hat in my hands," he said. Noonan said one reason the organization should be helped is the network of 500 volunteers it has built over the years who do much of the work for the agency. "That would be very difficult to recreate [this network]," he added. Noonan is asking residents of Greater Springfield to make a financial contribution and contact specific State Legislators and ask them to restore the $400,843 cut from Open Pantry Community Services Inc. in Line Item 4406-3000. He would also like people to send an e-mail to let others know about this situation and to include a link to the Open Pantry Community Services Inc. Web site, www.openpantry.org. | ||||||
