We’ve gotten questions about how the state budget for the coming fiscal year will affect SU. Dave McClure of Youth Services Bureau answers the question well: we don’t really know yet. Budget news seems to vary from day to day. At first we thought the tax increase plus the fact that the only funding we have left is federally matched might mean the first year in some time we won’t have more cuts. The the Governor’s budgets had cuts for us in it. Then the state realized they wouldn’t save so much because they’d also be giving up federal money. Today the news is about budget projections falling far short of what the Governor used in his budget and therefore we should go back to anticipating cuts again. It’s just difficult to know. Once we have clear information we will share.
If you’re noticing articles like this one, know that that is a different situation than SU. Those grants threatened with cuts now are the same type of funding stream as the SU grants that were already cut a number of months ago. This article expresses some sympathy for the Governor’s situation, but we would argue that there are better choices to be made than those proposed and there are more planful ways to go about addressing the state’s severe budget challenges.
I would echo the sentiments of Dave’s article at the link above: the human service agencies in LaSalle County make good use of every dollar that comes there way, they are good neighbors to each other, and see how vital services depend on each other to establish that safety net for when any of us may need it.