SOS Fears City Is Backing Away From Its Pledge

Directors of the uprooted charity Share Our Selves expressed fear Monday that city officials appear to be backing away from their pledge to help the agency relocate to a new site.

Their comments came in response to the city’s latest proposal to help SOS relocate from its current home at the Rea Community Center to a building on West MacArthur Boulevard that also houses the Community Development Council, a private anti-poverty group.

The City Council today is scheduled to consider a revised plan that places significantly more of a financial burden on SOS and enhances the financial position of the CDC.

“It is very obvious that the rules have changed” since last week, SOS Executive Director Jean Forbath said shortly before the SOS board was to meet to discuss the city’s proposal.

Last week, the council endorsed a plan to help SOS move to quarters in the CDC building, at 1695 W. MacArthur Blvd., under terms that called for the city to assume almost the entire cost of the lease payment.

Under the revised plan, however, SOS would assume at least 25% of the lease payment and, among other conditions, would be required to make an up-front deposit of its total obligation.

Mayor Peter Buffa had announced the initial proposal at a press conference two weeks ago and said it was intended to be a “safety net” for the problem-plagued charity, which Buffa and a council majority recently ordered to vacate its home of nine years at the city-managed Rea center.

SOS directors have said all along that they would accept the CDC move only as a last resort.

But the latest city proposal now places SOS in an even more precarious position. It can accept conditions that directors believe are not in the charity’s best interests, or it can reject the CDC move and hope that it can quickly find a suitable building on its own. If not, it faces closure.

Whatever course SOS takes is complicated by the fact that the city has virtual veto power over where the agency can locate.

Any move will require a special permit and public hearing by the city’s Planning Commission, at which point the charity is likely to face opposition from the surrounding community. City Manager Allan L. Roeder said Monday that the revised proposal reflects the recently “improved financial circumstances of SOS” and is not an attempt to renege on the city’s offer of help.

When it appeared that SOS might have to close after being ordered to move from the Rea center, the charity received a flood of contributions.

Forbath said, however, that the bulk of the contributions--an estimated $300,000 to date--are contingent on the charity purchasing its own building.