Groups ask city to keep funding
By Ethan Smith
Published in News on May 25, 2015 1:46 PM
With word out that Goldsboro City Council is considering cutting certain allotments to several local charitable organizations, local leaders came to the budget discussions to plead their cases.
Literacy Connections director Pat Yates gave a lengthy presentation to the council, demonstrating why the requested $26,500 for her agency would be necessary.
Under the city's proposed budget for fiscal year 2015-16, Literacy Connections would only receive $12,000.
Ms. Yates said that 76 percent of Literacy Connections students in 2014 were city residents, and that 52,772 adults -- or 58 percent of the adult population -- read below a ninth-grade level.
Nearly 10,000 adults in Wayne County cannot read at all, Ms. Yates said -- nearly one out of every 10 adults.
Ms. Yates said she grew up in Goldsboro and left in 1993, but when she returned she felt like something was holding Goldsboro back.
That something, she said, was a lack of basic math, reading and computer skills.
There are 10 factors that can cause a community to fail, she said, such as physical, verbal, sexual and mental abuse, unstable homes, teen pregnancy, physical or mental illness and poverty.
At the root of all of these factors, she said, is illiteracy.
"Nobody likes to talk about this, so I feel like the bad news fairy," Ms. Yates said. "But when this sits on one of us it sits on all of us. Each and every one of these factors I mentioned sits in an ugly groundwater that is fed by low literacy among our adult population."
As of March 2015, she said, Literacy Connections has served more than 800 people since its inception in 2011. These people went on to get jobs, to lead healthier lifestyles, be better parents, earn driver's licenses, earn varying degrees of education and vote.
During the past four years, services to students of Literacy Connections were provided by 357 volunteers, who provided more than 22,735 hours of instruction.
Those hours put in by volunteers are valued by the national literacy organization ProLiteracy at more than $512,917 -- and Literacy Connections provided these services with minimal funding over the past four years.
Through the city's funding alone -- $24,000 over the past four years -- the city has provided more than 10,200 and $172,000 worth of literacy instruction by way of six full-time teaching positions.
Literacy Connections' overall budget is about $180,000 including city funding, Ms. Yates said, and the county provides the organization with $101,000 each year.
So imagine, Ms. Yates said, if they were able to receive even more funding.
"That's a pretty remarkable contribution," Ms. Yates said. "As soon as I was hired I realized I couldn't do it by myself. So I got an AmeriCorps volunteer to help me out. I wrote a grant to be able to hire someone to help me out full-time, and it cost us $6,500. We got a full-time employee to work beside me and help me get the organization off the ground."
Ms. Yates said the organization did so well in its second year that it was able to hire two full-time people -- because the council gave the organization $12,000 to match grant funds.
"They offered me a third full-time employee to teach families in Wayne County how to read," Ms. Yates said. "And all we had to do was give them another $7,000 and I didn't have it and I couldn't promise what I didn't have and I had to turn it down. They came back to me a few months and offered me a third employee. I said I would like to have it, I talked to some people in city leadership and they said you can always try asking. So here I am."
Ms. Yates was not the only one to speak during the public hearing.
Brantley Partin with the Wayne County Museum also came to the hearing to request his funding not be slashed.
"You upped us by $10,000 last year and that's helped us immensely," Partin said to the council. "It's helped to pay for an intern we're getting this summer form the graduate program at North Carolina State University in the public history program that's going to be helping us out immensely."
Last year the additional funds were used to paint the museum, as well, which improved the building's curb appeal to the public, Partin said.
The museum received $22,000 last year, but is slated to receive only $12,000 this year as the budget currently reads.
Partin urged the council to not slash funding for the museum, as the museum was able to provide a meeting space for the community for free because of the funding, and meeting space is in high demand in the community, he said.
Former Goldsboro mayor Tommy Gibson, who was mayor in the 1970s, also came to speak on behalf of WAGES.
The city provided WAGES with $20,000 last year, but is slated to provide nothing to the agency this year.
"One of the primary ways (the funding helped last year) was that we've got lots of folks, hundreds of people, who are on a waiting list to get meals every day, five days a week," Gibson said. "We served Meals on Wheels and congregate -- the senior meeting areas -- so far (this month) we have served 461 Meals on Wheels, 403 per month who gather at these congregate areas."
Gibson said Meals on Wheels is more than just delivering meals. It is a human connection, Gibson said.
"In 2001 I started delivering meals once a week, and I'll tell you -- it's the greatest thing that's ever happened to me," he said.
The City Council is not finished discussing the matter just yet. It will reconvene Thursday, May 28, at noon to continue discussions about the budget, and will adopt a proposed budget and any revisions at the June 1 council meeting.
If no decisions are able to be made during this time frame, the council will wait until the June 15 council meeting to adopt a budget.