Albany cuts funds in half to Rochester poverty fighter

from the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle

The state government in New York cut funds to a children's poverty fighter. The organization called the Rochester Surround Care Community Corp. will see it's budget slashed by 2 million dollars. - Kale

by David Andreatta

The significance of the reduction is difficult to overstate for the fledgling social services organization, which has faced a string of setbacks and false starts in launching its grand vision to revitalize the impoverished northeast section of the city.

As of last week, the organization had received just $700,000 of its original state Department of Education grant but had committed to disburse over $1.1 million to local nonprofit agencies, according to financial records examined by the Democrat and Chronicle.

The agency is designed to bring a holistic array of services to poor neighborhoods. Nearly $884,000 of the earmarked money, intended to cover a wide array of health care, community safety, youth and financial literacy services provided by 20 different agencies, has yet to be delivered.

The depth of the cut stunned the newly named executive director, Iris Banister, who learned of it from a reporter. She said it would undoubtedly force the group to curtail some commitments.

"It is our intent to try to uphold as many of the promises we have made to people as possible," Banister said. "But I can't give you a clear pathway how we're going to do that right now."

Banister, who started her $125,000-a-year job five weeks ago, dismissed the suggestion that the cut could sink Rochester Surround Care altogether. She acknowledged, though, that the news was crushing.

"We are devastated but not discouraged," she said. "We will survive because it's about these children and this community, so we will survive."

The $2 million was among $427 million cut by the Legislature and Gov. David Paterson, who persuaded lawmakers to reopen the budget adopted in April as a first step toward reducing state spending by $1 billion over the next year and a half. The amended spending plan now stands at $120.9 billion.

Surround Care was not the only local nonprofit bloodied by the budget ax. The $980,000 slated for the Hillside Work Scholarship program was cut in half to $490,000. The Rochester Summer Youth program and the Catholic Family Center of Rochester also took hits.

But none of those cuts is arguably as potentially destructive as that sustained by Rochester Surround Care.

"It's an enormous blow because it's half of a lot of money," said Nancy Ares, an associate professor of teaching and curriculum at the University of Rochester's Warner School of Education, who has been studying the organization since its inception in 2005.

"Four million was going to go toward a lot of important things," Ares said. "They have operated on a shoestring for a while, so I wouldn't anticipate that this will stop them, but to have to figure out how to continue their work with half of what they expected will be quite a challenge."

Indeed, many of the organizations that Surround Care pledged to support have received only a small fraction, or nothing, of what was promised.

A group called Slater's Raiders for Peace, an anti-crime and youth mentoring program operated by Grace Community Village in memory of slain Rochester resident James Slater, was granted $181,580. It has received just $46,000.

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