A month ago, several local nonprofits got a notice from the Summit County Manger, saying the county wasn’t giving any funding next year, due to the grant the county was making for a new location for the Children’s Justice Center.
On Wednesday, a representative from one nonprofit asked the council to reconsider that decision.
During the public comment period, the council heard from Ed Rutan, the co-founder of the mental-health service group Connect Summit County.
He said that he supports the Children’s Justice Center but hoped the county can also find the funds to support other nonprofits.
He said Connect is one of the programs that supports a strategic objective of the council.
“The first one is, does the nonprofit fulfill one or more of the counties core governmental functions? Such as police, fire, water, sewer, roads, public health, etc. In the case of Connect, it would be health or more specifically mental health in terms of what we do. More specifically as you know, mental health is one of the strategic objectives that you have identified.”
Rutan said they applied for a $10,000 grant for an online directory of mental-health services. He said the item was first funded last year.
“We also received $5,000 from the Park City Community Foundation, $5,000 from the Promontory Foundation and we put in a $7,500 match on top of the Promontory Foundation as they require. So, we got broad support, not just from the county but also from other organizations to create the new directory. Which we have done. Now that we have it, we’ve got to keep it going. As you all know, something like that directory is no good if its current. If it’s yesterday’s news it’s not going to help anybody if they find somethings that’s not true anymore, don’t find something that is out there but it hasn’t been added to the directory, the directory loses its value.”
We asked county council member Glenn Wright for his reaction to Rutan’s comments. He said that’s a topic for the county’s 2019 budget, which will be considered for several weeks, until their decision session on December 12th.
“We’re going to have further discussions on this. I think there’s some feeling amongst the council that there are some activities that we can fund. In the past that pot of money totaled about $100,000 for all of the county charities that were applying for grants. I suspect what we’re going to be doing over the next about four weeks is deciding how to proceed on that. One of the thoughts that have come out is that local 501c3’s can approach various departments within the county and say, this is a service that we can provide for you that’s in your nexus of responsibilities and we’d like some funding for this particular project. I think that will probably be the new direction.”
