HUNTINGTON BEACH : City Cuts Funds for Single-Parent Aid

Prompted by a change in federal funding, the City Council this week slashed spending for a much-lauded program that helps ease low-income single parents away from government aid.

Council members, in cutting annual city funding for Project Self-Sufficiency from $85,000 to $35,000, directed staff officials to devise a plan to sustain the program’s current level of service. With the financial reduction, however, that goal may be unattainable, said Ron Hagan, the city’s community services director.

The council’s move, while casting the program’s future into uncertainty, diffused a controversy among the city’s social service agencies.

Representatives from many of those agencies and the city’s Human Resources Board, charged with distributing the city’s public-services funds, strongly opposed a staff recommendation to withdraw $85,000--nearly half of the annual social service budget--to maintain the current funding level for Project Self-Sufficiency, which provides educational guidance, food, housing, child care and other assistance to 131 single parents.

About 35 agencies each year compete for $200,000 in federal Community Development Block Grant funds that the city may spend on public services.

Last year, the city had supported Project Self-Sufficiency through a separate block grant account earmarked for administrative services, since the program is run by city employees. That account typically had extra money available, and as a result the single-parent program did not draw upon the general public-services fund, Hagan said.

But under a new mandate from the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, which distributes the block grant funds, the city since January has not been allowed to support the program through the administrative account. Therefore, the council this week agreed to add Project Self-Sufficiency to the list of agencies funded by the Community Development Block Grant public-services account.

The Human Resources Board told council members it could afford to allocate as much $35,000 for the program without harming other supported agencies.

While agreeing to that funding level, the council asked Hagan to study ways the city might limit its spending on Project Self-Sufficiency.

Hagan said the city may be able to cut its costs by attracting a nonprofit group to support the program, combining the program’s administrative operations with that of another agency or boosting fund-raising efforts. The program already raises about $1.5 million each year to cover most of its costs, Hagan said.

But, Hagan acknowledged, all three new funding options he will be studying “have major drawbacks.” Consequently, he added, it may be impossible under the new funding for Project Self-Sufficiency to continue at its current level. “It will be a real challenge,” he said.

Project Self-Sufficiency, founded by the city in 1985, has been widely recognized as a model program for helping low-income single parents move into higher-paying careers.