But hey, I hear they’re hiring at Walmart!

Date: Wed, 29 May 2013 22:32:46 -0400
From: Karen Crowell
Subject: Responding to chathamatters

“Our fiscally conservative commissioners have set responsible budgets, set priorities and set limits on spending, taking our county from complete stagnation and loosing companies (employers) to rapidly gaining companies, employees, investment and development!”

When your fiscally conservative commissioners took control of the Board, they were in a rush to make good their campaign promises to cut the “waste” in our county’s budget. Unfortunately they didn’t take the time to do a thorough analysis of the situation first. As pointed out in a chat list post dated 1/;13/20, they ignored “requests by Commissioners Kost and Cross that the proposed actions be considered as part of budget deliberations for Fiscal Year 2011-12, particularly since there does not appear to be a financial emergency at this time. Deliberation of the
relative merits of the targeted programs and pos itions within the context of projected revenues and expenditures for the upcoming Fiscal Year could have promoted thoughtful, considered decisions within the context of all available information, including input from official County advisory boards, which was peculiarly absent.”

Non-profits took a direct hit right off the bat. According to plan, over the next five years they would lose virtually all of the funding for administrative costs that the county provided. We’re now approaching Year Three. Check out exactly how painful that cut is going to be,according to plan:

Goal: Reduce administrative funding by each year for those agencies whose % of county funds to total budget is less than 5%:
Year One – 10%
Year Two – 20%
Year Three – 40%
Year Four – 60%
Year Five – 100%
Total Savings: $70,500

Goal: Reduce administrative funding by each year for agencies whose county funds are a larger share, reduce at a slower rate:
Year One – 5%
Year Two – 10%
Year Three – 20%
Year Four – 40%
Year Five – 100%
Total Savings: $201,000

Looks great on paper, doesn’t it? That’s all that’s great about it, though. Every dollar in that cut represents one more person’s struggle to get by that just got harder.

Chathamatters concluded by saying “Jobs pay the bills, pay for education, pay for food, pay for medicine, and pay for a home. I’ll take that over government handouts any day.”

Most people would, given the chance. But the fact remains that minimum wage jobs DON’T pay for all that.

7.25—amount in dollars of the current federal minimum wage

15,080—amount in dollars earned by a minimum-wage worker in a year

19,530—amount in dollars of the federal poverty level in 2013 for a family of three.

So, maybe those government handouts come in handy even if you DO have a job.

Don’t count on keeping it, though. If the proposed 2013/2014 NC budget cuts go into effect thousands of people across the state will lose their jobs. And finding another one won’t be easy. Because employment figures for Chatham County are already down according to the NC Department of Commerce, Labor, & Economic Analysis Division, due in large part to the great number of jobs lost during the Great Recession.

But things are going to get even worse for people still looking for a job. Much worse. Republicans in NC are about to make some of the deepest cuts to unemployment benefits anywhere in the country, effective July 1st, resulting in the loss of extended federal benefits for as many as 80,000 of North Carolina’s long-term unemployed.

You’re probably too depressed to read any further, so maybe I should wait for some other time to share the part about the Sequester – remember that wonderful gift to us from the most dysfunctional Congress in our history? That should be hitting the fan soon. But hey, I hear they’re hiring at Walmart!

Looks like the lines at the CORA food pantry will be getting considerably longer, folks.

Karen Crowell
Someone who thinks people matter, too..