Metropolitan Area Neighborhood Nutrition Alliance, which provides meals to those struggling with life-threatening illnesses, had itself been struggling to cope with the loss of city funding, but it was recently reinstated.
During Mayor Nutter’s November budget cuts, the Department of Human Services had its funding slashed by about $2.5 million for fiscal year 2009 and $5 million for the following fiscal year. DHS notified MANNA in November that it was ending its $350,000 contract with the group, but the agency is now saying that it later reconsidered that decision but didn’t tell MANNA.
Alicia Taylor, spokesperson for DHS, called the gaffe a miscommunication, “plain and simple.”
“We made the decision to renew the contract, but the ball was dropped somewhere along the way,” Taylor said.
For the past 10 years, MANNA received the money from DHS to operate a program that provides meals to children of parents who are suffering from serious illnesses.
“After doing an analysis that was required by the mayor, we initially made the decision to cut MANNA’s funding,” Taylor said. “But in the process, toward the end of the year we started looking at all of our resources and contracts and realized that this was, in fact, one of the services that we were mandated to provide to ensure the safety and well being of our children.”
Currently, MANNA’s children’s program provides meals for 50-75 youth and also works with St. Mary’s Family Respite Center, which offers childcare services for families affected by HIV/AIDS.
Richard Keaveney, MANNA executive director, said he was notified about the loss of funding around Thanksgiving and called it a “real shock.”
He was also shocked when he was informed Feb. 17 that DHS was going to renew the full contract.
“We’re of course delighted,” he said. “We’re thrilled.”
Keaveney said that after he’d originally been notified of the cut, he petitioned DHS to reinstate some, if not all, of the funding.
“We made our case in December why they shouldn’t cut this funding and apparently they did reconsider but forgot to tell us,” Keaveney said.
The last contact Keaveney had with DHS officials was in December, when the agency requested a list of the children MANNA serves who are also in the DHS system.
Taylor said DHS took this action because the agency had been reevaluating its decision to revoke the contract.
“As we were reassessing all of our contracts, we contacted MANNA in December for some statistics, which they supplied,” she said. “But the person here who was in contact with MANNA thought that they had already been informed that we were planning to renew their contract, because that’s why we were contacting them about that information.”
MANNA receives the DHS money after the organization submits monthly invoices; as he was under the impression that the $175,000 MANNA had already received from DHS for the fiscal year would be the last of the money, Keaveney stopped submitting invoices in January.
The DHS funding comprised about 8 percent of MANNA’s budget.
Jen Colletta can be reached at [email protected].