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<\/p>\nPinellas County Commissioners are reassessing which social services should be funded by county government and which could instead rely on state dollars or private fundraising. Commissioner Chris Latvala has proposed ending the county\u2019s Social Action Funding program, which provides grants to nonprofits offering community services.<\/p>\n
An advisory board recommended $1.7 million for 17 organizations for fiscal year 2027. County Administrator Barry Burton recommended reducing that to about $667,000 for seven existing programs while eliminating funding for proposed programs.<\/p>\n
Latvala wants to go further.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Pinellas County Commissioner Chris Latvala says nonprofits facing county funding cuts will get a one-year bridge as officials reconsider taxpayer support for social services. Photo provided.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur residents demand tax relief, so any way we can do that I think is prudent,\u201d Latvala told the Catalyst. \u201cA lot of the nonprofits do very good work, but a lot of them can get funding from the state or private fundraising. Property taxes shouldn\u2019t have to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pinellas County is considering a $5.14 billion fiscal year 2027 budget. The proposed General Fund would increase from $1.116 billion to $1.125 billion.<\/p>\n
Latvala said existing Social Action Funding recipients would not lose county support immediately. Instead, the county would use reserves to fund them for one more year, giving organizations time to find alternative sources of revenue.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are not taking it to zero this year,\u201d Latvala said. \u201cWe are doing a one year funding forum. We are using reserve funds. All the nonprofits get a year notice.\u201d<\/p>\n
Latvala raised the issue during the commission\u2019s Sept. 3 budget work session, arguing that nonprofits could seek money through the Florida Legislature. He said he wants the county to get \u201cout of the business of funding nonprofits\u201d through the grant program and focus its budget on core services.<\/p>\n
That would not necessarily end county contracts with nonprofits hired to provide specific services on the county\u2019s behalf.<\/p>\n
The commission\u2019s Sept. 10 agenda, for example, included a five-year contract worth up to $7.26 million with 211 Tampa Bay Cares, doing business as First Contact, to administer emergency financial assistance for adults without minor children. Funding for the agreement is included in the proposed budget.<\/p>\n
Commissioners also considered nearly $4 million in three-year agreements with St. Vincent de Paul CARES and 211 Tampa Bay Cares for rapid rehousing. Those programs provide housing navigation and case management for people experiencing homelessness and administer a direct-assistance funding pool.<\/p>\n
Latvala said those contracts could face scrutiny this fall as commissioners examine whether the county is paying multiple organizations to provide similar services.<\/p>\n
\u201cCommissioner Scott and Eggers have brought up that we will be looking at those in the fall to see how many of those services are duplicated,\u201d Latvala said. \u201cIf we have five or six programs attacking homelessness issues, then that\u2019s something we have to look at. We don\u2019t need a number of organizations doing the same thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Social Action Funding grants support programs serving seniors, children and other residents. Under Latvala\u2019s proposal, existing recipients would have one final year of county funding before being expected to seek support elsewhere.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pinellas County Commissioners are reassessing which social services should be funded by county government and which could instead…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":397200,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[202,204,203,199,201,200],"class_list":["post-397199","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397199","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=397199"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397199\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/397200"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=397199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=397199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=397199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}