Sarasota County Commission reverses cuts to some childcare, Boys and Girls Club programs

The Sarasota County Commission voted Tuesday to reverse its previous decision and restore more than $1 million of funding for numerous human services programs from organizations including Boys & Girls Club, the Early Learning Coalition and others that benefit children, veterans and struggling families.

In reversing their decision on some of the dozens of the programs they voted not to fund two weeks ago, commissioners cited confusion over the board’s new system in which its citizen-led Human Services Advisory Council and Behavioral Health Advisory Council assess and rank applicants’ proposals.

Commissioner Mike Moran led an overhaul of the advisory councils and funding recommendation system over the past year.

Moran had disapproved of the councils’ past funding recommendations and has argued the prior process was riddled with “insiders” and “power brokers” whose work had been done in the dark, while he had spent the last several years “dragging this into the sunshine.”

Yet even after his changes, Moran largely rejected the councils’ recommendations and pushed his own funding suggestions at the Sept. 12 meeting, based on a different scoring system than that used by the advisory councils.

“For me this felt like rushed decisions,” Commission Chairman Ron Cutsinger said at Tuesday’s meeting.

Cutsinger had requested that the board revisit its vote.

The County Commission's vote earlier this month rejected the advisory councils' recommendations for funding more than two dozen programs – among them almost $522,000 for the Boys & Girls Club of Sarasota and Desoto Counties.

It also entailed cutting $510,000 in funding for the Early Learning Coalition of Sarasota County, or ELC, and its School Readiness Program, which provides financial support to low-income and working-class households for early childhood education and care.

The decision had sent shock waves through the area’s nonprofit organizations, upon which thousands of local families rely for help amid crises in housing, childcare and mental health.

“I hadn’t fully vetted the process,” Cutsinger added Tuesday. “I think it’s important we get a second look and reassess.”

Moran agreed that there was confusion about the scoring process that had come to his attention after the last vote, saying that the system still needed improvement. Much of the confusion appeared to stem from the fact that the advisory councils scored applicants based on three priorities set by the County Commission, while the ranking Moran presented Sept. 12 focused solely on whichever priority a program scored highest in.

“Anything transformative can be incredibly painful,” Moran said.

Following scoring adjustments made by Cutsinger and Moran, the commission voted Tuesday to approve the advisory councils’ recommended funding for seven more programs.

That included two from the Boys & Girls Club; Safe Children’s Coalition’s programs for children in foster care and its Schoolhouse link program helping homeless youth; Child Protection Center’s education program to prevent child sexual abuse; and programs from the Laurel Civic Agency and the Loveland Center.

County Slashes Funding: Sarasota County Commission goes against advice and cuts funding to dozens of nonprofits

Impact of Funding Cuts: Sarasota County Commission cuts childcare, homeless services, Boys and Girls Clubs funds

Commission returns funding to some key programs

The commission faced more conflict and discussion over whether to reverse its decision to eliminate $510,000 recommended by the advisory council for Early Learning Coalition's School Readiness Program. That amount would be matched dollar-for-dollar by a state grant – doubling the total to more than $1 million.

Janet Kahn, ELC’s CEO, told commissioners that the nonprofit has received funding from the commission for the past 20 years. She also stressed that all the funding goes straight to families, many of whom are first responders, hospital workers, and county employees.

“These are families living in our community and serving our community, and they clearly need child care,” said Kahn, who was one of about two dozen members of the public to address the commission on concerns over the cuts.

Republican State Rep. Fiona McFarland of Sarasota also advocated for the ELC at a time, she said, when families face exorbitant childcare costs – second only to housing expenses.

Pointing to studies showing that every dollar spent on school readiness saves $7 in public aid, she said access to quality child care also helps parents stay and thrive in the workforce.

“There’s a reason to do it for the kids, but there’s also a reason to do it for the parents,” McFarland said.

Though it scored well enough to be funded under his points system, Moran said that, though he supported funding programs to help children with developmental disabilities, he thought that using taxpayers’ dollars to support childcare came close to “socialism.”

Moran also passed along advice he’d obtained from his 91-year-old father, who he said told him that kids don’t start learning until kindergarten and that the movement to get 3- and 4-year-olds enrolled in early learning was an excuse because people couldn’t afford child care.

“If this is a learning initiative, why isn’t the school board paying for it?” Moran said.

In the end, Commissioner Neil Rainford, acknowledging that the board might not want to fund the program next year, moved to fund the ELC’s School Readiness Program and the board voted 4-1 in favor, with Moran voting no.

The commission also picked some other programs to fund that didn't make the scoring cut set by Moran or Cutsinger, including two from Catholic Charities that help single mothers and families in crisis and two from Operation Warrior Resolution, which assists traumatized veterans toward healing.

Amid separate fiscal concerns over the area’s office on housing and community development, the commission decided to table the decision for two weeks whether to fund the advisory council's recommended $225,000 for a Suncoast Partnership to End Homelessness system that coordinates homeless services across Sarasota and Manatee counties. That information system is instrumental for eligibility for millions of dollars in federal and state grants.

Continued conflict of interest questions

Meanwhile, Commissioner Mark Smith advocated funding programs from Legal Aid of Manasota and several run by JFCS of the Suncoast, including $340,000 recommended by the advisory council for an Adolescent Diversion and Assistance Program. His proposals were voted down by the board.

When it came to the Adolescent Diversion and Assistance Program, Moran said that he had done a deep dive and "called around" and believed that other programs did a much better job than the JFCS.

He also argued that it didn’t qualify under the scoring system, though the advisory council scored it higher than a similar program offered by Teen Court of Sarasota, where Moran’s wife works as chief operating officer. Based on Moran’s suggestions, the commission voted previously to fund the Teen Court program for $132,000 – the full amount it requested and more than the advisory council recommended. Two of its other programs were fully funded as well.

None of the commissioners questioned Moran voting on a program run by his wife’s employer. Hours later in the meeting, Moran said his character was being called into question in news reports, arguing that he was the one who pushed for all providers – including his wife’s agency – to go through a competitive process for funding.

After the meeting, John Annis, past member and chair of the Human Services Advisory Council, questioned how that relationship did not come up during the voting.

Annis also disputed Moran’s charges that the councils of the past were filled with “power brokers” who worked in secret under the previous system.

Instead, he said, the members of the advisory council operated in the public, their meetings were recorded, and their members went “above and beyond” to avoid even the appearance of a conflict. Many members and commissioners worked for years to help improve the system, revising it repeatedly.

While it still needed tweaks, scrapping it was not the answer, he argued.

Annis, who is senior vice president of collaboration and impact at the Charles & Margery Barancik Foundation, said he was glad to see the commission reconsider its decision and fund many of the programs.

But he thought the confusion wrought by the new system – and the lack of responsibility taken for that – was disturbing.

“If something didn’t work, who is responsible for that? No one? That seems ludicrous to me,” he said.

The assessments by the advisory councils are always hard and the system is always subject to improvement, he added.

“But do we want the county commissioners the night before the meeting reading applications from nonprofits and coming up with their own scoring system?” he said regarding suggestions on how to make the system better. “This is not the way to do it.”

This story comes from a partnership between the Sarasota Herald-Tribune and the Community Foundation of Sarasota County. Saundra Amrhein covers the Season of Sharing campaign, along with issues surrounding housing, utilities, child care and transportation in the area. She can be reached at samrhein@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Sarasota County Commission reverses on funding Boys and Girls Club