Council should support Gorton’s new plan to restore cuts with federal relief money.
This is not an easy time to be a public servant. COVID-19 has drained public finances while demanding more and more from public service.
That’s why it’s a relief to see Mayor Linda Gorton make a sharp tack in her budget plans, thanks to federal CARES money that she wants to use to reverse devastating cuts to public agencies and non-profits that help our most vulnerable.
The budget process has been confusing for the public and a complete whiplashing for several non-profits that were told they would essentially be defunded.
In April, Gorton announced an austerity budget of $372 million that cut $12 million across city offices and $6 million to outside groups, such as GreenHouse 17, a domestic violence shelter and Arbor Youth Services, which supports homeless youth. The budget also slashed $1.8 million to the Affordable Housing Trust Fund and more than half of the yearly $750,000 budget of the Office of Homeless Prevention.
A few days later, she announced a private fundraising campaign to help the non-profits, which has since raised $250,000.
Gorton had no good choices in this budget. She had already taken $13.6 million from the $35 million economic contingency fund, and with no idea how low this economy can go, didn’t want to take more. Lexington is facing higher unemployment rates than seen during the Great Depression.
I tend to side with advocates who said that Gorton should have dipped further into the rainy day fund because cutting these groups brings higher societal costs. They help the people most affected by the kind of economic downturn caused by crises like coronavirus. It will only cost more in the long run to have more homeless families, more children without care, domestic violence victims without support and more unemployed non-profit workers. After all, as non-profit guru Danielle Clore said in a guest column: “These funds exist for a rainy day and it’s raining.”
Instead, Gorton announced Tuesday, the CARES money will allow her to fund many of the programs and replenish the rainy day fund with CARES money, which she found out about last week. It’s still not clear exactly how much it will be, but enough to cover Gorton’s stated goals.
At any rate, Gorton now says her top priorities are to restore funding to social service agencies, restore funding to the city’s affordable housing program and Office of Homeless Prevention and restore money taken out of the rainy day fund.
Let’s hope the Urban County Council agrees moving forward.
This story was originally published May 27, 2020 at 1:29 PM.
