Beginning July 1, 2016 the community centers in Maple Valley and Black Diamond may have to scale back their senior services programs.
United Way of King County, which funds portions of the community centers’ programs, released their five-year strategic plan and will be shifting funding around to match their current priority.
Sara Levin, spokesperson for United Way of King County, said the Black Diamond Community Center will see a reduction of $20,000 and the Greater Maple Valley Community Center will see a reduction of $30,000 in United Way’s 2017 fiscal year.
Levin said United Way is still aiming its dollars at programs that affect older adults like food banks and services that help the homeless.
“Our goal is to focus our dollars on programs that have the greatest impact in the community,” Levin said. “It’s not meant to leave out any particular group.”
Mark Pursley, executive director for the Greater Maple Valley Community Center, and his colleagues are asking the city of Maple Valley to make up the difference by increasing their 2016 annual allocation by $15,000.
Pursley said their fiscal year is six months ahead of United Way’s, so they will feel the impact of the funding reduction spread over the second half of 2016 and the first half of 2017.
Syd Dawson, the president on the board of directors for the community center, gave a presentation at the Sept. 14 Maple Valley City Council meeting, explaining the situation.
“The community center has received the same level of financial support (from the city) since 2010,” he said. “And for that we are immensely grateful.”
He went on to state that due to inflation over those years, they’ve actually had a reduction of $17,000 in purchasing power.
The community center has received approximately $192,500 – about 30 percent of their budget – from the city every year since 2010.
Pursley said if the city doesn’t increase the center’s allocation of funds, they will look in other places to keep the senior services program operating.
“We’re always in that mode (of looking for funds) because no funding is ever guaranteed by anybody,” he said in a phone interview Friday, Sept. 18.
The senior services program consists of socialization, nutrition support, meals and health and fitness.
“It’s all about prevention for us,” Pursley said.
He stressed that preventing problems before they occur is a lot more cost efficient than someone, who is likely on limited income, paying for a broken hip or another costly health-related ailment.
“The things we do here are not sexy,” he said. “It’s not a ‘oh look we have saved the world,’ but what we’re trying to do is keep people away from the cliff; catch them at the top of that cliff before they go over.”
Pursley also said they don’t have much wiggle room to transfer funds from one program to senior services.
“Most funding comes in for specific purposes,” he said.
Ultimately if the center cannot find funding to bridge the funding gap, Pursley said they will likely have to make some cuts.
