SANTA ANA : City Lets Volunteer Center Break Lease

The City Council has accepted a report indicating that the county’s premier volunteer organization is facing financial difficulties and will allow the organization to break its lease at a city-owned building four years early.

The council’s 7-to-0 vote Monday, made without comment, also forgives four months’ back rent owed by the Volunteer Center of Greater Orange County. The center paid about $6,000 a month for about 6,000 square feet of office space at the Santa Ana Regional Transportation Center.

Officials said a career center, which includes the city of Santa Ana among its partners, will move into the volunteer center’s old office.

According to the report, the volunteer center’s financial problems stem from “constrictions of traditional funding sources.”

The private, nonprofit center organizes approximately 30,000 volunteers a year and provides information to hundreds of nonprofit agencies. It depends on an array of government grants and private donations for funding.

Center President Carol R. Stone has said that while the organization has cut programs, it is not in dire financial straits. She said the center first wanted to move a year ago to a safer location.

No one addressed the City Council regarding the report.

Volunteer center officials said the agency’s budget has hovered around $1.7 million since 1992.

Stone said the center withheld rent to see how lease negotiations with the city would turn out. She said the center will use the money to pay moving costs.

The volunteer center will move into 7,200-square-foot offices in Santa Ana in August. Stone said the rent will be lower, but declined to name the exact figure.