Homeless don't make the cut

By: RICHARD RIEHL - for the North County Times | Thursday, December 20, 2007 9:04 PM PST ∞

Ebenezer Scrooge's excuse for stiffing the poor can be heard in the words of county Supervisor Pam Slater-Price's chief of staff, as he explained why his boss wouldn't use money from her $2 million annual Community Projects fund ---- a pot of money given to each of the five county supervisors to use at their discretion ---- to support the North County Homeless Shelter Network. "We do not fund shelters," John Weil told North County Times reporter Craig TenBroeck.

If that's true, why does Slater-Price's Web site list her $1.65 million funding of a new animal shelter in North County as one of her top accomplishments ? She and Bill Horn couldn't scrape together $45,000, about 1 percent of their combined budgets, to shelter homeless humans.

Horn's spokesman, John Culea, claims the grants "usually involve one-time capital improvements." I guess that depends on his definition of "usually." Projects funded by his boss this year include a majority of exceptions to that rule.

Weil and Culea's deceptive answers reveal why it's time for county supervisors to come clean about their slush funds.

Despite recommendations by a 2004 grand jury that the program be more openly publicized and documented, supervisors bury recipient names and grant amounts in the minutes of Board of Supervisors' meetings. Go to the county clerk's Web site , scroll through each meeting agenda, and look for actions taken under the item, "Finance and General Government."

A sample of this year's projects offers no insight into why homeless shelters shouldn't be included.

Bill Horn's largest grant went to a project far beyond North County: $150,000 for the design and construction of a new theater in Balboa Park. He gave a total of $169,000 in grants, ranging from $10,000 to $50,000, to seven nonprofit organizations for expenses unrelated to capital improvements ---- the purchase of bed frames, mattresses, sofas and other furnishings; a fundraising dinner and silent auction; a holiday of homes tour; volunteer training; an awards event; classroom equipment; and a community symphony concert.

Slater-Price's grants range from the $50,000 she gave to the YWCA of San Diego County for the construction of a shelter for victims of domestic abuse ("we do not fund shelters"?), to $2,800 for the San Diego County Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse, a single issue 501 (c) organization with a legislative agenda, for their annual scholarship luncheon.

There's little to quarrel about over the worthiness of most of the above projects. But Slater-Price's curious gift to a political advocacy group that promotes narrow business interests may give us insight into the unwillingness of supervisors to shine a light on their decisions.

Slater-Price and Greg Cox are the only ones to conspicuously advertise the grants on their Web sites. But the purposes they give for them offer no rationale for choosing one project over another. Making it up as you go along, as Weil and Culea have tried to do, isn't good enough.

Supervisors spent only $5.2 million of their $10 million budget for the grants in 2004-05. Last year $600,000 was left unspent . With vague selection criteria wrapped in a cloak of secrecy, suspicion remains that the taxes we pay for this worthy program are being used for political gain. And to that I say, "Bah, Humbug!"

Carlsbad resident Richard J. Riehl is a freelance columnist for the North County Times. Contact him at RiehlWorld2@yahoo.com.