gronberg@heraldsun.com; 419-6648
DURHAM -- City administrators have taken a hard line on nonprofit groups in recent days, docking two that missed deadlines for submitting financial reports and telling a third they have no money to give to help it pay rent.
Budget and Management Services Director Bertha Johnson confirmed this week that officials had withheld a combined $6,077 in payments to the Durham Affordable Housing Coalition and Preservation Durham.
The groups were up to two weeks and one week late, respectively, in turning in completed audits or financial reports they owed the city under the terms of their funding agreements, Johnson said.
Meanwhile, City Manager Tom Bonfield confirmed he'd deflected a verbal request for aid that came last month from the leaders of the New Horizons Academy of Excellence, an alternative school for youths suspended from Durham Public Schools.
DPS officials have severed ties with New Horizons. It was looking for about $7,200 to help pay the bills for January and February.
But Bonfield told school leaders the city doesn't have any extra money to give, on top of the $29,539 in aid the City Council pledged to their group as part of the fiscal 2009-10 budget.
The manager was skeptical about the chances of a contribution being more than a stopgap, even if extra cash were available, given New Horizons' now-moribund relationship with DPS and its failure last summer to secure requested subsidies from a federal anti-gang initiative.
"What good is paying for January and February if there's not a plan for March, April, May and June?" he said.
The docking of the Durham Affordable Housing Coalition figured in discussion at Thursday's council work session, thanks to a query from Councilwoman Cora Cole-McFadden.
Johnson assured her the cut hadn't targeted the group's anti-homelessness or home-repair efforts, which rely on other sources of funding.
The coalition lost $5,267 to its paperwork snafu, a figure that came out of the $65,841 in subsidies the city had pledged to supply.
In dealing with nonprofits, the city doesn't hand over its entire pledge at once. Instead, officials parcel out the money in three stages, the better to monitor compliance with aid contracts.
Mandatory financial reporting is part of that oversight. Simplifying things slightly, the city withholds 10 percent of the next scheduled payment for every week a report is late. After six weeks, "we cancel the contract," Johnson said.
Preservation Durham lost $810 out of a pledged $20,250, Johnson said.
The New Horizons request has also drawn council attention. At least one member, Howard Clement, has asked the manager about it, doing so after another recent council work session.
But present council policy is to fund individual nonprofits for no more than three years in a row. New Horizons received at least $259,853 in aid pledges from the city from fiscal 2004-05 on, and has gotten money in each of the four most recent budgets.
Elected officials have also signaled that they'd prefer that educational nonprofits needing money get it from DPS or the county government, the organizations responsible under state law for funding schools.
Bonfield hasn't heard anything more about the New Horizons request since the feelers last month.
"They may be out shopping it to other council members or county commissioners or DPS people," he said. "We're not doing any more work on it at this point and haven't been asked to."
