Nome nonprofits ask city for money after being cut from budget

Nome City Council Chambers. (Photo by Matthew F. Smith/KNOM)
Nome City Council Chambers. (Photo by Matthew F. Smith/KNOM)

The city of Nome has passed a budget for the next year, and even dropped property taxes, but at Monday’s city council meeting residents came out to ask the city to find more room in the budget to support community nonprofits.

Earlier this month the Nome City Council passed an $11.3 million budget for operations, and saw fit to also drop the property tax rate from 12 to 11 mills.

But what wasn’t in that budget was any mention of funding for various nonprofits and other charities in Nome, some of which have relied on thousands of dollars of funding from the city in the past. Even the annual Community Benefit Share, given each year by Norton Sound Economic Development Corporation for public projects, remained earmark-free in the city’s budget.

That caused many community members to speak at the meeting to ask not just for a piece of the benefit share pie, but also for some kind of dedicated city funding.

Danielle Slingsby, executive director of the Nome Community Center, said nine out of every 10 dollars her group spends comes from state grants. Now, with state budget deficits in the billions, Slingsby pushed for a permanent place on the city’s ledger.

“We’re running programs even when we get funding pulled, and we try to make sure it works just to fill in the gaps in the community,” she said to the council.

“We’ve got the Boys and Girls Club (and) funding was pulled, we still made it work. We pulled some strings, we’re keeping it together to still run with one staff, 50 kids … it’s still running, but its something we could use constant and continued support for.”

Several members of NEST, the community’s emergency shelter, made a similar appeal to the council. Lance Johnson spoke to the role the shelter plays in preserving lives, reducing homelessness, and keeping police from responding to calls better served by the shelter’s services.

“We can’t afford to see NEST go away in this community, or we’re going to see some really bad numbers,” Johnson said. “I hate to put things in numbers but that’s what it is, it’s numbers from (a) financial standpoint, it’s numbers from casualties, it’s numbers in substance use increasing greatly because of … homelessness.”

Johnson added, “Joblessness and homelessness are things that are going to contribute” to those issues the most, concluding that the community “can do something about one of those two things.”

Council member Stan Andersen invited the nonprofits to find a supportive council member and have them introduce an amendment to the budget, or otherwise wait for the community benefit share to be divvied up early next year.

 

Sign up for The Signal

Top Alaska stories delivered to your inbox every week

Site notifications
Update notification options
Subscribe to notifications