At budget time, Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels is getting a bit predictable, anti-poverty advocates say.
In his two-year general fund budget for 2009-10, they laud the mayor for adding roughly $2 million extra each year for food and shelter programs. But they say his proposal calls for a few questionable cuts he's tried to make before, including eliminating more than $300,000 a year in advocacy money that anti-poverty groups like the Children's Alliance and Solid Ground use to lobby for funds outside Seattle. For the third year in a row, the mayor is also trying to cut more than $139,000 a year for Soar, a program that helps low-income parents and kids prepare for school.
The mayor also wants to save about $1 million a year by eliminating three outreach programs that provide housing, treatment, and job training for adults on the streets. He also wants to end Seattle Team for Youth, a $1 million per year program that some say the mayor should save and use for his own initiative.
As part of his youth violence initiative, Nickels has tasked three agencies to come up with plans for how to provide services for kids in Central, Southwest and Southeast Seattle. But, given that Seattle Team for Youth has been around since 1989 and already provides case management services for troubled youth, says Steve Daschle, director of Southwest Youth and Family Services, "Why disband a perfectly good program that's already doing the hard work that needs to be done in favor of something that needs to be defined?"