With the federal budget battle coming to a close, there is good news and bad news for local governments and non-profits that rely on grant fund.
The good is that the cuts aren’t as bad as some expected. The bad, however, is that there will still be reductions to operations running on razor thin budgets.
Oak Park officials are expecting a 16 percent reduction to Community Development Block Grants, federal money distributed to state and local governments used for social services and infrastructure improvements in poor neighborhoods. While the budget battle was at its height, some in Oak Park thought the cuts would be so steep it would doom CDBG and local non-profits that depend on them.
“I’m happy it wasn’t 60-something percent,” said Janis Akerstrom, the village’s grant services manager. “That would have been devastating.”
The village is expecting $1.7 million this summer. About 15 percent is spread across 14 local organizations, 20 percent goes toward the manpower and costs for the administration and allocations of the fund. The remaining 65 percent goes toward infrastructure improvements and housing services. Law mandates the percentages and how they are allocated.
How the reductions will impact the 15 percent given outright to organizations is not clear yet, as standard procedure for the village has simply been to spread the cuts evenly across all departments. But since some organizations may be able to absorb more reductions than others, there are still preliminary discussions on how the cuts should be appropriated in a fair manner, Akerstrom said.
“It’s just a matter of time to figure out who can withstand it,” she said.
One example is Seguin Services, Cicero-based non-profit that provides 60 group homes in 20 communities in the western suburbs. Six of the homes are in Oak Park and the organization receives more than $250,000 in CDBG funds from various communities, $81,400 of which came from the village last year.
The money is used to make upkeep and safety improvement to the homes, said Executive Vice President Jim Haptonstahl.
“Oak Park housing is an older stock that needs a lot of upkeep,” he said. “The thing is we need to keep that housing up to speed and safe and secure. We need those CDBG funds.”
The CDBG funds are exclusively used for improvements, from standard maintenance like new roofs to necessary improvements like accessible bathrooms, handicapped lifts and improved fire prevention systems.
Haptonstahl said it is not as simple as allocating funds from other areas, like their operations and programs budget. They are also anticipating a $600,000 reduction from the state in those areas, so there will be no flexibility, he said. They may be forced to forgo some improvements, which Haptonstahl believes are vital to the safety of the residents, due to both the CDBG and the state cuts.
“The fact is we are already down to the bones,” he said. “So what do we do?”
