Nonprofit squeaks by budget ax
By Steve Herring
Published in News on June 21, 2015 1:50 AM
Literacy Connections of Wayne County on Tuesday survived two attempts, one drastic, to slash its county funding.
The first attempt, which would have reduced the county allocation to $85,000, was led by Commissioner Joe Daughtery who has championed the elimination of all county funding for nonprofits.
Daughtery later withdrew the motion, saying that the board did not appear ready to face the issue.
The second, more drastic attempt, came from Commissioner Joe Gurley who said he had a lot of unanswered questions about the free adult literacy program.
The funding issue surfaced after Chairman Wayne Aycock suggested that nonprofits be held to the same standard as county departments, which were told to reduce their budgets by 2.5 percent.
There are mandated services the county must provide, Gurley said. But for the "extras" like nonprofits, there needs to be "extra evaluation," he said.
"At some point in time there are organizations that should stand up and help out these underprivileged, such as churches, civic groups," he added.
Gurley then made a motion to cut the funding in half.
Commissioner Ray Mayo offered an amendment to the motion to leave the funding as recommended at $101,232 and to look more closely at nonprofit funding next year.
"If there are a lot of questions, I would suggest that any of us get involved and see exactly what is happening at some of these nonprofits and that the reason they exist is because either the county or education system won't do it," Mayo said.
Commissioners should sit in on a few sessions, and not just Literacy Connections, of groups that are doing a "good job" in the county to see who the recipients are, he said.
Commissioners John Bell, Ed Cromartie, Bill Pate and Mayo voted for the amendment. Daughtery, Aycock and Gurley voted no.
The vote was the same for the amended motion to leave the funding untouched.
Daughtery said when he talks to people on other boards, they tell him they dealt with the issue years ago and do not fund nonprofits.
Yet the Wayne County board is still involved and is funding up to one-half of some nonprofits' budgets, he said.
"Previous boards and future boards should not be in this position, period," Daughtery said. "Here we are trying to decide what nonprofit, not a division or department of county government at all, that we are making decisions of what their funding is from the taxpayer.
"I again stress to my fellow board members. We are here basically passing a budget where we are imposing taxes and fees on our citizens to collect with the full weight of government forcing them to pay because if they don't, we are going to seize your property."
Then the county is going to take a portion of those dollars and hand it out to nonprofits, he said.
"I hear the word 'compassion,'" Daughtery said. "It doesn't have anything to do with compassion. It comes down to what our duties are.
"Our duty is to limit taxation, in my opinion. It is putting us in an awkward position."
Cromartie noted that earlier in the meeting that Bell said 40 percent of the county's residents have reading problems.
"The position and responsibility of, I think of all of us, is to do what is overall best for all of the folks who are in the county at that time," he said. "We are talking about basic reading.
"We are not talking about folks who can spend six weeks in a class and go on to Wayne Community College and succeed. We are talking about people who need basic literacy survival education."
Those people came to Wayne County looking for the jobs offered by several local large employers, he said.
"So where does the responsibility end?" Cromartie said. "We are representing everybody to include the employers of this county who are benefiting from a certain group of folks learning to read at the very basic level."
Daughtery then made a motion to cut most nonprofits by 2.5 percent, to decrease Literacy Connections funding from $101,232 to $85,000, but to add the $34,500 back into the budget for body cameras for the Wayne County Sheriff's office that had been cut out earlier in the month.
Mayo said that he had some "heartburn" -- something that Daughtery says he has once in a while with Literacy Connection.
"Literacy Connections is doing something in this county that the school system will not do," Mayo said. "It is filling the void of people that need literacy training. I do not believe that it is right to target one (group) such as you have done in your motion. You may or may not like who is running Literacy Connections or what they are doing, but the bottom line is they are doing what no one else in this county will do.
"At some point in time there comes a time when $15,000 or $20,000 doesn't make that much difference when you are talking about people's livelihood, their education, economic development or health. We are all over that. We are spending money for all of those things."
Literacy is part of education, he said.
"So there comes a point in time where maybe we need to start looking at a different word here," Mayo said. "Rather than dollar bills maybe we need to start looking at a word called compassion -- what people really need.
"Literacy Connections is a part of education in this county and that is why I am making this amendment to Mr. Daughtery's motion."
Mayo's amendment was to take no action and revisit the nonprofits for the 2016-17 budget.
Daughtery said he could see the board was not ready to address the nonprofit issue as a whole and withdrew his motion.
Aycock asked if Mayo would withdraw his motion.
"I can do that," Mayo said.