Expect a large public showing at the June 27 County Board of Supervisors meeting, where anti-fracking activists will share public comment time with supporters and employees of The Village Project, a Seaside-based nonprofit that provides free services to underserved local communities.
At issue for The Village Project is funding from the county, or rather, less funding than the nonprofit was made to believe it would receive from the county in the upcoming fiscal year.
In a June 21 letter to the county, TVP Executive Director Mel Mason states the $385,312 contract being offered by the county health department so that TVP can provide mental health services for 2016-17 fiscal year is about $149,000 short of the amount needed to maintain services at existing levels.
The county, in May, even indicated it understood that, and the Board of Supervisors approved a contract amendment of that amount. The staff report for that May 10 meeting indicated the amendment would "assure sustainability of services."
Yet a month later, the new contract offer was similarly deficient.
"Frankly, we were shocked," Mason writes.
Mason says the loss of that money going forward will multiple impacts.
"If we are denied the $149,000, we will need to terminate the half-time therapist, freeze the hiring for the outreach/volunteer coordinator and more than likely rescind the promotions and pay raises for three affected staff," he writes in an email.
Mason says the nonprofit has been under-funded for years, but thought the county had finally seen the value of providing free mental health services for underserved communities.
"I think that it’s a real benefit for the county that it has an agency like ours that is providing these services to people who would otherwise never have these services," he says.
"We’re going to work through it, and tomorrow hopefully we’re going to have a pretty good outcome," he says. "Some kind of redress is needed here."
UPDATE 06/29/16: After hearing testimony from The Village Project's employees and supporters at the June 28, the Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to grant TVP the funds they sought.