Advocates far and wide recently converged at 1350 Pennsylvania Avenue for a showdown with the D.C. City Council.
People of all walks of life joined forces to express their outcry to our public officials under a coalition called Save our Safety Net. The coalition gathered 1,850 signatures on a petition that protested cuts in the 2010 budget.
Among the programs to be cut that helped the disadvantaged are TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families), local rent supplement, adult literary, access to justice, housing first, supported work program, school mental health counseling, job training resources and The Nuisance Abatement Fund.
The TANF program itself is slated to be cut in half. The total amount of the cuts was in the neighborhood of $37 million.
The council has adopted $50 million in new revenues which will keep cuts from getting worse.
The council also supported many increases that will affect low income residents these includes sales cigarette and gas taxes.
For parents like Sabrina Gay, the pain was all too real. “They don’t schools have anywhere to live, they don’t have anywhere to go.”
After the protest, the group moved into City Hall – broken down by wards- to confront all the council members all at once. Ward seven was to see their councilwoman, Yvette Alexander. Things got hairy as the council member tried to explain the situation. “There are cut all across the board we’re all taking a hit” she said.
The vote on Friday, August 31 would be an emotional and sensitive one. The vote yielded cuts all across areas in the low-income sector. The original proposal by the mayor did not have as many cuts as the actual vote. Some programs were restored, such as The Grandparent Caregiver program, and for others, such as TANF, the cuts were not as severe as the mayor’s budget first indicated.
