A grant application from the county’s family justice center has easily cleared Alamance County’s governing board despite the demise of an earlier funding request that this agency had hoped to submit to the same state-level repository of revenue.
The county’s board of commissioners put up no hurdles on Monday when the justice center presented its latest application to the N.C. Governor’s Crime Commission, which seeks funds to assist children who’ve grown up amid domestic violence.
If approved by this state-level commission, the center’s requested grant could provide up to $500,000 over two years with no match requirement for the county to bear. The family justice center intends to use these funds to hire a “child trauma specialist” and subsidize the operations of “Camp Hope” – a program that the family justice center has launched for children and families that have endured domestic abuse.
The board of commissioners ultimately signed off on this grant application as part of a so-called “consent agenda” of items that its chairman and the county manager deemed sufficiently routine or noncontroversial to be adopted en bloc with no individual discussion.
Nothing for granted
The inclusion of the center’s request in this list of expedited approvals was, by no means, a firm guarantee of support from the county’s governing board.
Three months ago, the commissioners refused to allow the center to request another grant from the Governor’s Crime Commission that had, likewise, begun as a seemingly mundane matter on the board’s consent agenda.
That particular subsidy, which also required no local match, would’ve brought in $125,000 to fund services that the family justice center provides to Spanish speakers who’ve experienced domestic violence. The center had hoped to obtain these funds from a pot of money that the Governor’s Crime Commission has earmarked for “underserved populations.” Its application zeroed in on an “other than white” constituency that it further described using the neologism “Latinx.”
Syke Sullivan, the family justice center’s director, told the commissioners had she and her colleagues had lifted these terms from the commission’s own application materials.
This verbiage nevertheless rankled commissioner Ed Priola, who faulted the terms as “conditionally racist” and ideologically fraught. He also decried the center’s plan to contract with Centro la Comunidad – a Roman Catholic Charity that he accused of misusing federal disaster relief to “fly illegal aliens” across state borders.
Right of recusal
Priola’s complaints eventually persuaded the rest of the board to ground this particular grant application. Sitting out this decision was commissioner Pam Thompson, who had asked to be recused from the board’s deliberations and subsequent vote due to her longstanding membership on the crime commission.
Thompson made an about-face from her previous practice on Monday and voted with her fellow commissioners to approve the center’s latest grant application. Thompson attributed this change to her reluctance to see the center’s current request to the crime commission meet the same fate as the defunct application from January.
“I usually recuse myself from items involving the GCC,” the commissioner declared. “But I’m going to support this.”
Thompson’s decision received no objection from Alamance County’s attorney Rik Stevens, who recalled his prior advice that membership on the state-level commission “is not an impediment to your voting.”
Calls from “Down Home”
The commissioners also heard from a number of area residents who shared Thompson’s determination to see the family justice center tender its grant application.
About two dozen of the center’s supporters had piled into the county’s meeting chambers that evening in order to urge on the application’s approval. Most of this these audience members sported t-shirts that identified them as members of Down Home North Carolina – a liberal advocacy group that has made periodic appearances before the county’s all-Republican board of commissioners.
In this case, about a half dozen of the group’s members availed themselves of a designated public comment period to address the commissioners on behalf of the family justice center. These speakers included Camille Mikkelsen and her daughter, Lily, who emphasized the value of the services that the center provides to children who’ve dealt with domestic violence.
“Domestic violence is no joke or game,” Lily Mikkelsen admonished the county’s governing board, “and it can directly impact the lives of children.”
Ebony Pinnix described herself as a past victim of domestic violence who may very well face further reprisals from a former spouse who has spent time in prison.
“Without the help of the family justice center, I wouldn’t be standing here talking to you now,” Pinnix insisted. “The funding just needs to be there.”
Meanwhile, Aletha McKenzie said that the family justice center has been a crucial resource to people who’ve hit a particularly rough time in their lives. \
“That is what this family justice center does,” she declared. “It allows men and women space to get themselves together…I beg you to have mercy on these families that don’t have it together yet.”
The commissioners also received a rebuke from Theresa Draughn for allowing concerns over verbiage sink the family justice center’s previous grant application to the Governor’s Crime Commission.
“This board turned down a no match grant from the Governor’s Crime Commission. . . citing language in the application,” she recalled. “Turning away funding because of a word. . . does not make us principled. It makes us out of touch.”
All in favor
The commissioners, for their part, appeared to need no extra encouragement to sign off on the justice center’s latest grant application. In the end, they approved the request by a margin of 5-to-0 when they adopted the rest of Monday’s consent agenda.
Later that evening, commissioner Kelly Allen tried to explain her divergent responses to the justice center’s two grant applications. Allen recalled that her misgivings in January had a lot to do with seemingly discriminatory wording of the proposal on behalf of Spanish speakers.
“The reason I voted against the first justice grant,” she told her colleagues, “is that it excluded some of the population, and I’m against excluding any of the population. It should be all inclusive.”
Meanwhile, Steve Carter, the vice chairman of Alamance County’s commissioners, declared his own general support for the county’s family justice center – which was the state’s first comprehensive resource for domestic violence when it opened its doors more than a decade ago.
“I’m trying to make it clear that we’re not trying to stop that service,” he added. “In fact, I’d like to see it enhanced, if anything. . . We want it to be done right. We don’t want anybody to be excluded. We want it to be all inclusive because that’s the whole point, in the first place.”
