Poverty, Planning & Politics

In the middle of an economic recession, many governments are attempting to ensure that their citizens do not hit rock bottom for moral or obvious economic reasons. In Pinellas County, a county in western Florida where I am from, however, things are done a little differently.

Pinellas County has to deal with budget cuts, a lot like almost every other county in the United States. However, Pinellas County seems to deal with budget cuts by first scraping every penny out of programs to help the poor and homeless, and then moving on to delicately trim programs that the majority of voters might notice.

Here are a few examples:

• County Connection Centers ($749K): cut completely. These county connection centers filled many community outreach roles, such as providing hurricane preparedness outreach to mobile home parks, neighborhood clean-up programs, town hall meetings connecting the county to the citizens, and many other outreach roles.
• Housing Trust Fund ($5M): cut completely. This fund would have been put towards the development and preservation of affordable housing for the poor.
• Case Management Services for the Homeless ($192K): cut completely. This helped homeless employable adults with barriers to employment obtain jobs.
• Intervention Services ($99K): cut completely. This money was put towards beds in homeless shelters, basic life skills training, employment application assistance, etc.
• Pinellas Hope ($770K): cut completely. This money made up about 72% of the funding for a program run by the Diocese of St. Petersburg and volunteers which provided temporary food, shelter, running water and a safe place to store belongings to homeless adults in the county.

You can take a look at the full list of budget reductions here.

Not to mention that the county planning budget was cut by almost 20%. You may find yourself asking "oh, did they make county planning more efficient?" No, they just fired 25% of the planners, so they were the people making the least money anyway. Lord knows what would happen if we cut some of those multiple $100K+ administrative salaries in almost every single county department.

Anyway, if you would like to help keep Pinellas Hope running after Pinellas County stops funding it, then you can do so by donating food, materials or money here and then clicking on "donations" on the right-hand side.

If you would like to join me by letting the Pinellas County Board of County Commissioners know what you think of their plans, you can do so by going here. We might even change some minds!

Thanks for reading everybody.

- David