The Portland City Council on Monday will consider proposals to restore funding for the city’s overflow homeless shelter and emergency aid for certain types of immigrants when it takes up the budget, according to the mayor.

The proposals would add more than $5 million to the $221.8 million budget submitted by the former acting city manager, who sought to put Portland on sound financial footing in light of the state’s recent efforts to cut funding for the city’s social service programs.

Mayor Michael Brennan, however, said it is not likely that the amendments – if passed by the council – would increase the tax burden of local property owners.

“I don’t think we’re talking about an increase in taxes,” Brennan said Friday afternoon. “We’re talking about a reallocation of funding or additional fund(s) from the state.”

A public hearing on the budget has been scheduled for 5:30 p.m.

The amendments seek to address the two most controversial elements of the city’s budget that were recommended by former Acting City Manager Sheila Hill-Christian in response to actions by the LePage administration. Hill-Christian left on May 8.

The LePage administration told the city in February that it would no longer fund the $2 million in operating costs for the city’s shelters, after an audit found that some people staying at the adult shelter had significant financial assets.

The administration is also seeking to prohibit General Assistance from being provided to asylum seekers and visa holders.

The city is currently challenging the GA decree, both in the court system and before the Maine Legislature.

Hill-Christian responded to the state’s actions by recommending the closing of the city’s overflow shelter, a temporary 75-bed facility set up at the Preble Street Resource Center, where the city paid roughly $150,000 in rent and for overnight staff. She anticipated that the overflow shelter would not be needed once the city began checking the financial eligibility of people staying in the shelter.

Hill-Christian also recommended that the city stop providing GA to asylum seekers and visa holders, since the state was no longer reimbursing those expenses, punching a $5 million hole in the current budget.

Similar costs would be incurred in the fiscal year starting July 1, if the administration is successful in its endeavor, and those costs would have to be shouldered by local taxpayers.

Brennan said Friday that funding for the emergency overflow shelter would be taken from a $350,000 transition fund recommended to help asylum seekers who would lose GA.

That transition funding would not be needed if the city continued to provide that assistance.

The council was originally scheduled to take up its budget on May 18, but Brennan postponed by the vote in hopes that fate of pending state legislation, including the budget, would be more clear.

That postponement was made after City Hall’s communications director issued a press release before the meeting, a move that irked the council. The action also came after the council received a memo from city finance staff saying that “the negative implications become more severe each week the budget is not approved.”

“An approved budget would give confidence to city staff that the City Council is willing to make some of the key changes which are required to keep the city moving in the right direction,” the memo states.

Since the postponement, a legislative subcommittee endorsed allocating $2 million for emergency shelters, but the proposal has not gone before the full Legislature and it is unclear how that funding would be allocated to the roughly 50 emergency shelters.

Brennan said he also anticipates a recommendation to restore at least a portion of the bike-pedestrian coordinator position that was eliminated by the manager’s budget.

 

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