SEQUIM — Donna Tidrick breaks down in tears when she thinks of the growing number of needy families that Sequim Community Aid can no longer help with their Clallam County Public Utility District power and water bills or their rent.
“We’re broke,” Tidrick, Community Aid’s president, said, adding it is the worst economy she has seen in the region since joining the group in 1983.
Tidrick, 79, and others with Community Aid take pride in the fact they have always counted on private donations and have never taken a dime from government agencies.
Bottom line: Community Aid’s funding has dropped from a high of $83,387 in 2004-05 to about $1,350 as of June 12.
The help group started with more than $50,000 at the beginning of the year.
“The people we are helping have had jobs, working every day, but now there is no work,” she said.
Some counted on construction jobs that didn’t materialize or work at assisted living centers, supermarkets or big-box stores.
“People began coming in October with no construction jobs,” she said. “We knew then that people were going to be in trouble.”
Tidrick said joblessness among the young and their younger children has been complicated further by retirees taking jobs, such as at the Sequim Walmart.
Community Aid, which has helped the poor inside the Sequim School District boundaries since 1947, started with delivering food baskets to needy families or Christmas toys to children.
Since then, Community Aid has helped thousands of families and unemployed individuals with the bills.
“It’s our working people that we’re helping,” Tidrick said.
“We don’t have one paid employee,” she added.
Consequently, she said: “If the people don’t give it, we don’t have it.
The group’s main donor, the Albert Haller Foundation, typically donates $9,000 to $10,000 a year in two installments, but the next Haller grant does not come until October, Tidrick said.
Much of what is donated to Sequim Community Aid comes from businesses and local groups.
In February, four businesses donated a check for $3,200.
Sequim Christmas Chorus gave $1,600 in February to Sequim Community Aid, while First Federal donated $1,000, Sound Community Bank donated $500, and The Co-op Farm & Garden in Sequim contributed $100.
The chorus’ share came through ticket sales from its 2010 concerts and contributions from local organizations and individuals.
Chorus board members and representatives of The Co-op Farm & Garden, First Federal, Sound Community Bank and the Sequim-Dungeness Valley Chamber of Commerce gathered at the Friendship Garden in Carrie Blake Park to present the check to Tidrick, who was all smiles.
Sequim Community Aid helps people in a crisis survive, and Tidrick said it could not survive without this kind of support.
Sequim Community Aid has typically provided one-time annual help with utilities or rent.
Tidrick said the group, which has 18 members, gets a list of names from Clallam County Public Utility District that identifies those who are three months behind on the utility payments and are about to have service disconnected.
It deals only with those about to have their power and water cut off.
The group also receives donations from nine area churches.
“It was kind of founded in a Christian way,” Tidrick said of the group. “But you don’t need to go to church to help, and you don’t need to go to church to get help.”
For more information or to donate, phone Sequim Community Aid at 360-681-3731.
________
Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Jeff Chew can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at jeff.chew@peninsuladailynews.com.