For weeks, the Gillette City Council has been discussing a possible resolution designed to establish objective criteria for which social service and outside agencies receive funding from the city. The current criteria the council is considering will cut off funding to six local agencies.
The city council is allotting time during their February 6 meeting for public comments on this issue before they formally consider the issue.
“It’s always nice to hear from the public on what they feel about what the council is doing, and on this one we have always supported quite a few different social agencies in town plus children’s activities and other things,” says Gillette City Councilwoman Louise Carter-King. “So I think if anyone is interested in hearing reasons for or against continuing to support these agencies they should come.”
Under the new criteria the city council tentatively agreed to on January 23, any social service or outside agency seeking funds from the city will have to be a nonprofit organization that relates to a scope of city services that would ordinarily be provided by a municipality. In addition, they will have to demonstrate an appropriate need and comply with new accountability standards set by the city.
“The goal that we were really trying to secure is the notion of identifying a series of core values that the council could rally around and support with regard to agencies that didn’t have those same purposes in their mission,” says City of Gillette administrator Carter Napier.
According to Napier, one of the biggest challenges the City of Gillette faces is turning down projects that have good merit, but at the same time, are not consistent with the directives of the council or the city. It’s a decision that has to be made, he says, because the city’s budget allocated to social service and outside agencies has grown 82 percent over the last four year. This trend, Napier contends, is unsustainable in the long run.
In fiscal year 2011-12, the City of Gillette allocated over $1 million to provide funding to social service and outside agencies, up from a budget of under $600,000 just four years ago.
As it stands now, the tentative resolution will cut funding to the following six agencies:
- Bell Nob Golf Course, $25,000
- Lasting Legacy Park, $15,000
- Fourth of July parade, $4,000
- Gillette Thunder Speedway, $25,000
- RENEW, $60,000
- Campbell County Drug Court, $15,000
Carter-King says there are a few agencies on the chopping block she wants to revisit during Monday’s city council meeting.
“One of them being the Fourth of July celebration,” she says. “I think that is a wonderful community activity that I would hate to stop supporting. It’s a very small monetary contribution and I think I would rather keep supporting the Rec Center for putting that on.”
Carter-King adds that she wants to revisit the idea of cutting of funding to the Campbell County Drug Court.
“I’d like to discuss that more before we would cut that off too,” she concludes.
Monday’s Gillette City Council meeting begins at 7:00 p.m. on February 6 inside the council chambers on the first floor of City Hall.
