SEQUIM — With about six weeks left as an elected leader, Walt Schubert is letting fly with his strong feelings.
“I’m going to make a pitch to you,” he told his fellow Sequim City Council members during last Thursday’s study session.
The city should increase its funding, Schubert said, to the Boys & Girls Club’s Sequim teen programs by 40 percent in 2010, from this year’s $60,000 to $100,000. Then he listed the activities, with their projected costs, that could be added to the evening teen club:
• The High Adventure outdoors program, $3,000.
• The $10,000 Keystone program, which teaches teenagers how to search for work, develop job skills and run a business.
• A weekly swimming and fitness program, $2,460.
• Add a part-time staff position, $14,000.
• Establish a marketing plan to introduce youth to the teen club’s offerings, $3,500.
• Keep the teen club open six days a week rather than the current five, $6,000.
The city has funded the teen activities for three years now; in 2007 a $100,000 contract for services opened the teen club at 400 W. Fir St., and the council renewed that in 2008.
Then, at the end of last year, the council reduced the contract to $60,000, which Schubert said forced reductions in hours and programming.
Schubert, who lost his council seat to Ted Miller in the Nov. 3 election, has said he’ll become more deeply involved with the Boys & Girls Club come the new year.
The club’s funding is one piece in the 2010 budget puzzle, and it’s likely to be part of at least one more heated council meeting next Monday night.
Budget hearing
The members will hold a public hearing on the budget during their session at 6 p.m. in the Sequim Transit Center, 190 W. Cedar St.
The council’s goal is to adopt the budget that night or during its Dec. 14 meeting, also at 6 p.m. in the Transit Center.
For months the council members have eyed Sequim’s dim financial picture, and worried about drawing too much from the city’s general fund reserves.
Earlier this year they decided they wanted to keep a fund balance of $1 million by 2010’s end.
When the new city manager, Steve Burkett, and finance director Karen Goschen presented the draft budget on Nov. 2, they offered good news: the fund balance at the end of 2010 will be a projected $1,150,000.
Not that each council member considers that $150,000 to be “extra” money for spending on requests from agencies like the Boys & Girls Club — or from the United Way of Clallam County, which has asked Sequim for $50,000 in funding for human services.
“We should not be giving social services the taxpayers’ money,” member Erik Erichsen said Thursday.
“If individuals want to give to charities, that’s their prerogative.”
Basic services
A city, in contrast, should provide sewer, water, street and police services, Erichsen said, adding that organizations like the teen club should go out and raise their own money directly from local residents.
Schubert couldn’t abide that.
Teenagers are members of the community, he said, who need the government’s support.
“We have to provide for our youth,” he said. “If we don’t, they’re going to be out on the street,” and when teens get into trouble, the costs are higher for everybody.
Mayor Laura Dubois, often Schubert’s adversary, responded sharply.
“We don’t ‘have to,'” she said. “We are able to, this year.” But a better plan must be made, Dubois added, perhaps one for a new parks and recreation district.
“I suggest our city manager survey the citizens in this city,” she said, “on funding things like a parks district [and] the teen club,” and even senior activities.
“It’s something we need to look at for long-range planning, so we don’t have this discussion every year.”
The study session was about finished, but Schubert wasn’t.
“One more thing, and I’ll shut up. I promise,” he said. “The first year we funded the club for $100,000, there were council members who didn’t agree. One argument was that it was taking $100,000 away from sidewalks.”
Some months afterward, a young man went behind the Boys & Girls Club with the intention of taking his own life, Schubert said. The club staff stopped him.
“They turned it around,” he said.
“Ever since that day I have thought: how many feet of sidewalk is a boy’s life worth?”
“That is an emotional argument,” Dubois replied, adding sidewalk safety and fiscal health are likewise important.
Council member Bill Huizinga acknowledged that he was the one who advocated for sidewalks three years ago.
But then his wife, Donna, brought their grandson, Aidan Sanders, then 7, to a council meeting. He’s around too many teenagers with too little to do after school, Donna Huizinga told the council.
“They’re becoming his peer group,” she said, and those kids need somewhere to go besides the streets.
“I got to thinking,” Bill Huizinga recalled. “What’s the most important thing we have? It’s our kids.
“I believe the city’s responsibility is to provide for these kids . . . it’s an investment in the community.”
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Reporter Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladaily news.com.