Local programs brace for potential cuts in federal funding

Posted 3/30/17

But each of those local services could be threatened under proposed budget cuts from President Donald Trump.

“I think everybody that’s on a federal program is going to be writing letters to their [Congressional] delegation,” said Bucky …

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Local programs brace for potential cuts in federal funding

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A warm meal for a senior citizen, a Shakespeare play and a flight from the Cody airport don’t appear to have much in common at first glance.

But each of those local services could be threatened under proposed budget cuts from President Donald Trump.

“I think everybody that’s on a federal program is going to be writing letters to their [Congressional] delegation,” said Bucky Hall, the administrator of Cody-Yellowstone Air Improvement Resources, which helps promote air service at the Cody airport.

Hall is helping to organize support for the now-threatened federal Essential Air Service program — which subsidizes winter flights to and from Cody. (See related story below.) Hall added generally that, in his opinion, the president is doing his best to reduce federal expenses, “which isn’t a bad idea.”

Meals on Wheels

Trump proposes to cut hundreds of millions of dollars from the Department of Health and Human Services and eliminate Community Development Block Grants, which provide some funding for Meals on Wheels programs across the nation.

The exact size of the cut is unknown, according to The Associated Press, but White House budget director Mick Mulvaney said the government “can’t spend money on programs just because they sound good — and great.”

“Meals on Wheels sounds great,” Mulvaney said. “Again, that’s a state decision to fund that particular portion, to take the federal money and give it to the states, and say look, we want to give you money for programs that don’t work.”

Locally, the meal service does work and makes a huge difference, said Cathy Florian, program director of the Powell Senior Citizens Center.

“It’s so important to our community,” Florian said last week.

The center provided warm, home-delivered meals to 155 people in the Powell area last year — a total of 13,141 meals.

Beyond the nutrition, “they are getting someone to socialize with, someone who checks on them on a daily basis,” Florian said.

Sometimes, the driver who delivers a meal may be the only person a homebound senior sees all day.

That contact can be crucial. If a senior doesn’t answer their door or answer their phone, their emergency contact and then law enforcement will be called, sending medical help if needed.

In addition to town residents, meals are delivered to folks in Garland, the Willwood, Ralston and residents north of town. The out-of-town delivery driver covers 48 miles a day on average, Florian said.

Meals are delivered Mondays through Fridays and in town on Saturdays. Frozen meals are available for the weekends.

The program helps ensure seniors can stay in their own homes, she said.

“In our rural area, we have a lot of people who live on their homesteads or homesteads of their parents, and they want to stay there as long as possible,” Florian said. “And that’s one of our goals, is to make that happen.”

In the U.S., staying in a nursing home for one month costs an average of $8,000 per person — the equivalent of seven years’ worth of daily home-delivered meals, Florian added.

“When you think of someone saying, ‘We’re going to do away with this program, I don’t think it’s doing much help’ — you know, you look at these hard numbers,” she said.

Of the local seniors who receive a home-delivered meal, 48 are at the poverty level — roughly one-third of those served.

Funding for Powell’s home-delivered meal program comes from a variety of sources. A meal costs $11.87 — that includes the cost of food, employees’ wages, fuel, utilities, etc. Seniors pay $3.50 for each meal. The federal reimbursement rate per meal is $2.40, and the state provides 18 cents.

After that, the senior center must fund the additional cost — $5.79 per meal — with other grants and private donations.

Without federal funding, the center would have to find more money to cover meal costs.

“When we start seeing the budget cuts from the federal level, then the governor has to make some moves himself, so then that starts to cut from these other programs statewide,” Florian said. “Then that affects us, too, whether it’s the city government, county commissioners or other programs that we’re used to having.”

Raising more money locally would increase the burden on the community.

“That stretches everyone here in town again,” Florian said. “It just gets harder and harder, and we’re all trying to tighten our belts.”

Florian is encouraging seniors and other residents who value the home-delivered meal program to contact their state and federal lawmakers.

Arts council

President Trump also is proposing to eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA)— an important source of funding for the Park County Arts Council. The local nonprofit provides a variety of performances, exhibits, educational workshops and other events.

“It may impact what we’re able to do in the schools, and it may impact what we present for the community,” said Steve Schrepferman, director of the council. “And more than likely, it would be some of both.”

The arts council offers various programs for youth, including the Missoula Children’s Theatre and Shakespeare in the Schools.

At Powell High School, every student attends the Shakespeare performance, he said.

“A program like that, no one is asking anyone for money — Park County Arts Council pays for it,” Schrepferman said.

Each summer, the council provides Shakespeare in the Park at no charge to the community. Dozens of residents attend the plays in Powell and Cody, and Schrepferman said he thinks people really value the performances.

“But [they] don’t always recognize that somewhere along the line, somebody spent money on it,” Schrepferman said.

The local nonprofit receives NEA funds through grants from the Wyoming Arts Council.

“That number they’re throwing out there is 40 percent of the Wyoming Arts Council budget is what is threatened,” Schrepferman said. “If there is elimination of the NEA, that means all that funding disappears.”

It would be up to each state to determine how to handle matching funds and cuts, he said.

“But it certainly would pull back incentive for state legislatures to support arts funding, so if something like this happens, it could impact funding even further,” he said.

The proposed federal cuts would impact the 2018-19 fiscal year, and they would come on the heels of “two years of significant cuts from the state.” The arts council has already seen cuts of about 14 percent, he said.

The nonprofit also receives grants from the Western States Arts Federation (WESTAF), which is directly funded by the NEA.

While Park County Arts Council also receives donations from residents and businesses, “a major portion of what we get is from grants,” Schrepferman said.

He said there is strong support for the arts among national and state legislators.

“We’re hopeful that their support will kind of guide this, or at least have impact,” he said.

If the NEA is eliminated and those grants dry up, it would mean significant changes to local arts programming.

“For the organization to continue, it would have to restructure,” Schrepferman said. “And without a doubt, it would mean trimming programs.”

President Donald Trump’s proposal to eliminate the federal Essential Air Service program could reduce the number of flights offered at Yellowstone Regional Airport each winter, a Cody air service booster says.

The federal government currently pays SkyWest Airlines $938,050 a year to fly between Yellowstone Regional Airport and Salt Lake City two times a day, between October and May. (That’s 960 subsidized Cody-Salt Lake flights per year, breaking out to a subsidy of $977 per flight.) SkyWest flies without government help during the summer months.

If the subsidy goes away, SkyWest and Delta might demand a “revenue guarantee” to keep flying between Cody and Salt Lake, said Bucky Hall, the administrator of Cody-Yellowstone Air Improvement Resources (CYAIR).

CYAIR is a nonprofit organization that promotes local air service. It has negotiated revenue agreements in the past; those deals guarantee that, if an airline doesn’t make a certain amount of money off ticket sales, CYAIR will cover the difference with whatever public and private dollars it can raise.

“Worst-case scenario: We could be paying for air service in the winter [to Salt Lake] — and we might not have the money to pay for it,” Hall recently told Park County commissioners.

The commission agreed to sign a letter of support for the Essential Air Service program.

In recommending that Essential Air Service be axed, Trump said the 40-year-old program — which guarantees that rural airports have at least two flights a day to a major hub — was supposed to be temporary. The president’s “budget blueprint” also says the program has high subsidy costs per passenger and that several communities “are relatively close to major airports” and some “could be served by other existing modes of transportation.”

More than 100 rural airports across the country participate in the program, at a cost of around $175 million, Trump’s budget says.

Cody is a relatively cheap airport to subsidize, according to U.S. Department of Transportation data analyzed by the Tribune; Yellowstone Regional Airport’s subsidy ranks seventh-smallest among the 112 communities that are receiving Essential Air Service money. As one example, Laramie receives $2.18 million in subsidies each year to guarantee its air service to Denver.

The current contract for Yellowstone Regional Airport is set to run until March 2018.

Tribune photo by Tessa Baker

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