Arlington Hts.’ grant money cut; therefore, so are its grants

Arlington Heights residents without health insurance can expect to wait longer to get into a program that gives them low-cost visits to a primary care doctor, due to cuts from the federal government.

Suburban Primary Health Care Council was one of 12 social service agencies whose grant from the village of Arlington Heights will be cut because the village’s federal Community Development Block Grant was cut. That organization’s portion of the grant will be reduced from $10,200 to $8,300.

The action will be finalized after a comment period and an Arlington Heights Village Board hearing Sept. 5.

Arlington Heights funds are used to send only village residents to area doctors, said Katie Barnickel, public relations manager for the council. The agency spends $871 to have a person in the program for a year, so the $1,900 cut would represent about two people. Arlington Heights residents are also eligible under funding from Cook County.

The big blow to the agency was losing $3 million from the state of Illinois, she said. Normally the agency serves 10,000 people annually in the suburbs. That number has been cut in half, and the wait is now two years, she said.

The village used last year’s federal grant amount to figure how much each agency would receive, then learned that amount would be cut 17.3 percent to $254,627.

The federal government weighs these grants heavily toward construction, so Arlington Heights had only $40,185 or 15 percent of the total to give to social service agencies.

Most of the 12 social service grants from the village were cut by 18 or 18.6 percent. The largest — to CEDA Northwest for day care assistance — was $20,000, cut to $16,280. A spokesman for that agency could not be reached Monday.

The smallest grants were $500, cut to $410.

Another group cut was Greater Wheeling Area Youth Outreach, Inc., which dropped from $1,750 to $1,435. The organizations knew the cut was coming and reduced activities at its summer camps, which served 174 youngsters mostly from River Trails Elementary District 26 and Elk Grove Township Elementary District 59, said Philip Herman, executive director.

Rebecca Darr, executive director of WINGS, which helps homeless and abused women and children, said the agency will try to make up the $360 lost from the $2,000 the village originally allocated. Other villages are also cutting their allocation, she said. WINGS spends the money on emergency or transitional housing for Arlington Heights residents.

Making up shortfalls is the role of the agency’s thrift shops are so important, she said. The agency has a temporary shop at Rand and Dundee roads in Palatine since a fire destroyed its larger shop on Northwest Highway in Palatine.

The village is not cutting the $5,000 allocated to the Children at Play program because that is a joint project with the Arlington Heights Park District, and the village’s general fund already gives $28,000 to it. A decrease would mean a shortfall for the program or an increase in funding from the general fund, the staff report said.

In the category of construction and economic development which has almost $300,000 available, the village’s single-family rehabilitation program also goes up 69 percent to $149,650 because of carry-over from the previous year. The $150,000 for debt service on the Senior Center was also not reduced.

The village also kept the $60,925 allowed for administering the grants.