Bay Area Reporter - June 12, 2008
Seth Hemmelgarn, s.hemmelgarn@ebar.com

Ann Harrison, executive director of New Leaf: Services for Our Community, indicated the cuts would mean denial of service to at least 250 clients and a waiting list of about three to four months. Services that would be cut include psychiatric services, group counseling, and substance abuse treatment. Harrison said the agency serves about 1,300 unduplicated clients annually.

According to information provided by Harrison, New Leaf is the only Community Behavioral Health Services contractor certified to provide both mental health and substance abuse services to the LGBTQQ community.

Harrison said the agency's ability to provide integrated services to clients with both substance abuse and mental health issues, rather than having to refer clients somewhere else, saves the city between 28 and 30 percent.

For months, the city has been wrestling with a projected budget deficit for next year that recently stood at about $338 million, and city agencies have been asked to help eliminate the deficit.

Harrison said she knew cuts were coming, but she said the agency didn't learn of how big the cuts could be until documentation on proposed reductions for dozens of groups was posted on the health department's Web site in mid-May.

"When we saw that ... we were pretty shocked," she said.

Harrison said New Leaf's total budget is about $2.7 million. She said about 75 percent of that comes from city contracts, and the rest is generated by fundraising and the small, sliding-scale co-payments from clients they're required to collect.

Health officials had spoken about wanting to make cuts to agencies even, but Harrison feels that although health officials " are trying to do their jobs as best they can," in the case of New Leaf, they didn't succeed in cutting evenly.

Gregg Sass, the health department's chief financial officer, said New Leaf receives $2.1 million in general fund money, and the total proposed $387,000 reduction is 18 percent of that.

Sass wrote in an e-mail to the Bay Area Reporter that the health department apparently didn't make cuts to prevention services, and if $243,000 of general fund money for health prevention were removed from the computation, New Leaf's reduction would increase to 21 percent of its remaining general fund money. "That looks consistent with the reductions made to other contractors," he wrote.

"We wish it was not necessary to make such large cuts," Sass wrote. "But the citywide deficit and reduction targets given to the health department left us with no better choices. Hopefully the board will be able to find savings elsewhere in the budget to restore funding to public health."

However, Harrison wrote in an e-mail to the B.A.R. , "The $2.1 million Sass is quoting is not general fund money." She wrote that it includes other resources, such as state-matched funding, "which have supposedly been 'held harmless' ... for a variety of reasons, including that many of these revenue streams are leveraged by state and federal dollars."

She told the B.A.R. that according to the agency's official allocation letter from the health department, its cut would be $354,387, but in a later e-mail she requested the B.A.R. use the $387,000 figure since "it's the highest number we've been given and since they keep changing things we need to expect the worst for the moment."

The agency's actual general fund money has been about $908,000, and if Substance Abuse Prevention and Treatment Block Grant discretionary funding were added, the total would be $1.2 million, Harrison wrote. That would make the cut about 30 percent of the agency's general fund money using the $354,387 figure, or about 32 percent using the $387,000 figure.

Mayor Gavin Newsom recently sent the city's budget to the Board of Supervisors, which has until the last working day in July to approve it.

Supervisor Tom Ammiano wrote in an e-mail to the B.A.R. , "Nothing's final yet, everything depends on the outcome of ongoing conversations between the budget committee and the mayor's office, which are informed above all by input from the community about how such funding decisions should be prioritized."

The board will hold a public hearing related to the health cuts at 3 p.m. Tuesday, June 17 at City Hall.

Tenderloin center also faces hit

The Tenderloin Neighborhood Resource Center, a drop-in center that's operated by Tenderloin Health and helps more than 270 clients daily, is expected to close at the end of June as a result of a proposed $800,000 cut from the city's Human Services Agency budget.

The center offers everything from bathroom access and a clothing bank to HIV testing, employment training, and help with shelter reservations.

Trent Rhorer, the Human Service Agency's executive director, noted there's another drop-in center - the Tenderloin Self-Help Center, operated by Central City Hospitality House - a block away. Rhorer said in the context of his agency's having to cut $22 million to help close the city's budget gap, as well as the proximity of the other drop-in center, "this is a cut where we could do less harm."

Dariush Kayhan, Newsom's homeless policy director, said there's duplication in services between the two organizations.

But Tenderloin Health spokesman Colm Hegarty said due to the center's services and the extensive hours that it is open, that "doesn't make any sense whatsoever."

Jackie Jenks, Central City's executive director, said she and others were "shocked" when they learned of the proposal.

"We're actually a neighborhood center, and not a homeless resource center," Jenks said. There's some overlap between the agencies' clients, but she said the Tenderloin Self-Help Center provides socialization and wellness services such as employment resources, holistic health, and services for people who are housed, as well as those who are homeless.

The resource center "provides distinct services to homeless people that we do not provide," Jenks said. "Plus, we're actually over capacity right now."

Jenks also said the Tenderloin Self-Help Center is itself facing a 22 percent cut from the health department. "We're losing staff and services here," she said.

Rohrer said about $150,000 remains for Tenderloin Health to provide shelter reservation services, but Hegarty said, "We would have to seriously look at that in terms of whether it would make sense. The agency leverages all its funding to wrap around the community drop-in center." He said closing the drop-in center means losing the ability to attract more funding and resources to the neighborhood.

Supervisor Bevan Dufty said cuts to New Leaf or Tenderloin Health are "unacceptable."

Dufty said New Leaf's helped in his efforts to address crystal meth as well as the needs of LGBTQ youth, and Tenderloin Health "is recognized as an outstanding provider to a community that has perhaps the greatest need for services."

"There's certainly a lot of political waters to be crossed in the next month," he said, "but I'm confident that we'll make every effort to restore these and other public health cuts."

The Board of Supervisors' budget and finance committee will hold a hearing for the public to comment on proposed budget cuts Thursday, June 19 at 5 p.m. in Room 250 at City Hall.

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