County May Temporarily Fund Family Centers to Avoid Cuts

A center in Benicia that provides parenting classes, domestic abuse support and other services stands to lose some of its staffing hours without action by Solano County.

The state will no longer reimburse Solano County for its Family Resource Centers because the county no longer includes them on a list of programs that are priorities for funding, Solano County spokesman Steve Pierce said.

The Solano County Board of Supervisors will meet Tuesday to consider providing the funding itself to cover the gap until the end of the fiscal year in June–without action, the Benicia Family Resource Center on East K Street would lose $17,000 and have to reduce staff hours and eliminate a parent program.

The money is only a small sliver of the agency's $8.4 million budget, but it would reduce the only full-time employee to 27 hours a week and cut the hours of both part-time employees there.

"Is it a big deal? Yes, when you consider most of the organizations do operate on a pretty shoestring budget," said Pierce, a former board member of the Dixon Family Resource Center. "When you take out a little it has an impact."

The proposed action at Tuesday's board of supervisors meeting would provide $161,000 from the county's Health and Social Services budget to fully fund the centers until another source of funding can be found.

"The county is doing a bridge for the remainder of the [fiscal] year as they continue to work … to develop new revenue streams," Pierce said.

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Solano County Board of Supervisors meeting
11 a.m. Tuesday
675 Texas St., Fairfield