Wasilla shouldn’t underwrite senior center

A proposal from Wasilla City Councilman Steve Menard would add a $25,000 line item to the city’s annual budget to help support Wasilla Area Seniors Inc.

At first glance, it seems innocuous enough. The senior center provides a valuable service to the Wasilla community and the Valley, including senior housing and preparing and delivering hundreds of meals a year to area shut-ins. It’s a worthwhile organization that does good work for our elders. When the center was in some dire financial straits this past year, the city came through with a lifeline of $25,000 to help keep the agency’s utilities paid.

A one-time stipend to help a struggling entity is one thing, supplementing its budget on an annual basis is quite another. Wasilla has every obligation to identify those agencies, groups and organizations that add value to the community, and there’s no argument Wasilla Area Seniors is such an operation.

Funding organizations that cannot financially survive on their own is not the place of government. One only has to look at the controversy over the shutdown of Matanuska Maid. The state took over ownership of the dairy in the 1980s in what was supposed to be a short-term bail-out until a private operator could be found to keep the failing dairy afloat. More than two decades later, the state finally shut the creamery down when it could no longer take being milked for a loss.

We’re also not that far removed from a controversy stirred up when customers of Municipal Light and Power in Anchorage learned the electricity supplier was contributing money to area nonprofit groups and charities instead of rebating or crediting excess revenue.

In Wasilla, it’s a slippery slope to begin to use the city budget as a vehicle for giving grants to nonprofit organizations. By setting this precedent, the city would have little wiggle room to deny other urgent requests. Who’s to say the Boys and Girls Club shouldn’t also be penciled in for $25,000 if its purse strings are pulled too taut?

The reality is Wasilla’s mayor wanted a moratorium on new library materials, saying the budget didn’t have $17,000 for that expense. Council recently balked at conducting a local survey because of cost.

While we agree with Menard that Wasilla Area Seniors needs help, the city can find other more appropriate avenues than simply handing over a check.

Wasilla can put its resources to use examining how it can help get the word out about the senior center’s needs. Perhaps city staff can help the center examine its finances and see where it is falling short to help identify appropriate avenues of funding, such as grants. What else is Wasilla Area Seniors Inc. exploring to raise funds and bolster its bottom line?

It’s difficult to say “no” to seniors without coming off as a Grinch, especially when the center’s executive director, Robin Hall, says that “without that funding our doors would be threatened to close.”

If the center’s funding is so shaky that $25,000 from the city will make it or break it, it needs long-term financial solutions that can keep it self-sufficient, not a lump-sum payment from Wasilla’s coffers.