Oregon’s North Coast is trying to figure out where the impacts of a federal funding freeze hit home.
Mike Brosius, a retired Costco executive, is spearheading an effort to gather together people who represent governments, agencies and organizations across Clatsop County. He wants to talk to them — and have them talk to each other — about what they are seeing now and where they think the hits could land in the future if federal funding is further delayed or never arrives at all.
Brosius is organizing two meetings in Astoria next week open to those officials and leaders only.
The first meeting, facilitated by former state Sen. Betsy Johnson, will be to discuss infrastructure and large-scale projects. The second meeting will be with human service entities and nonprofits. Staff from state Rep. Cyrus Javadi’s office and from the office of state Sen. Suzanne Weber are expected to attend the meetings remotely.
In Tillamook County, affordable housing projects that would have brought around 180 new units to an area in need of such housing are on hold. In Clatsop County, the funding freeze and potential cuts to Medicaid have placed Columbia Memorial Hospital in a difficult limbo as the hospital looks to expand and renovate its Astoria campus.
At Clatsop Community College in Astoria there have been no impacts yet, but the college’s leadership is watching closely for the money it receives through the Department of Education. College President Jarrod Hogue said he is concerned about the fate of a program that helps first-generation college students navigate the college system.
Up and down the coast, the uncertainty over federal funding is raising questions for school districts, developers, cities, counties, law enforcement — “You name it,” Javadi said.
A hold on federal funding leaves those entities with “holes in their budgets,” Javadi said,“but we’re still asking them to do things as required by law and the question then is how do we do the things we’re supposed to do if we don’t have the money.”
Javadi, a Republican, noted that the voters in the district he represents — District 32, which includes Clatsop and Tillamook counties and a portion of Columbia County — are pretty evenly divided between the Democratic and Republican parties. His responsibility, he said, is to the people in the district first, regardless of who is in the White House.
“I think there are elements of the Republican Party that…are not as sympathetic to the impact that freezing spending is going to have on projects like the housing (in Tillamook County),” he said, “but, you know, what is absolutely for certain is we need more housing throughout the district.”
The money may not be frozen forever for the Tillamook County housing projects, but Javadi said the delays are almost as damaging.
Community exercise
Even though it isn’t fully clear who all will be impacted by a freeze on federal dollars, Brosius said the upcoming meetings in Astoria are still a useful exercise for local government and community leaders.
“The first goal is to gather everybody together because everybody’s in their silos, right?” Brosius said. “The schools might know what their impact is. The county might know theirs. The city might know theirs, but no one’s pulling it all together to say what is the total potential impact and where does the funding come from for the total community.”
At a recent town hall in Astoria with U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley and Representative Suzanne Bonamici, the two lawmakers asked people in attendance to keep them informed about impacts of the federal funding freeze on local projects and organizations. Brosius said another goal of the upcoming meetings is to be able to draft a list to send state and federal representatives.
Jessica Sollaccio, a Warrenton city commissioner, is helping Brosius in his effort to get everyone in the same room and on the same page. She is participating as a private citizen and has her own concerns for what the funding freeze means for the North Coast.
With Brosius, Sollaccio developed a survey to send out to a variety of entities across the county to gauge potential impacts.
“I just think we sometimes forget how interconnected we are,” Sollaccio said. “and a lot of these services are, fortunately, things that we never ever have to think about. As it should be. We have the time and energy to spend elsewhere.”
“But now,” she said, “with everything in flux, it’s: How do we manage as a community if these things happen to go away.”
Downstream impacts
Both Sollaccio and Brosius worry about the downstream consequences of delayed or canceled funding.
A situation unfolding at the North Coast Food Web is what prompted Brosius to organize the meetings.
A delay in federal funding currently threatens employees’ jobs at the Astoria-based nonprofit as well as the ability of the local farmers, ranchers and other food producers that the Food Web partners with to reach customers.
The Food Web was already having a rough year. In January, the nonprofit discovered it would need to move out of its current location downtown and find a new home months earlier than expected. Then, following the inauguration of President Trump, the Food Web learned that the
remainder of a major grant it was set to receive through the U.S. Department of Agriculture was frozen.
Executive Director Jesse Jones, who only joined the Food Web in early January, is still figuring out how much of the nonprofit’s funding — even grants it receives through the state — are ultimately from federal sources. Though other, smaller grant funds are still coming in, the Food Web is looking to other sources of money and has put out a call for donations.
The freeze on federal funding “potentially impacts almost every single part of our operations and programming,” Jones said.
People take classes or develop products for their businesses in the Food Web’s commercial kitchen. Around 21 food product producers use the Food Web’s kitchen and 51 farmers connect with customers and sell their produce through the nonprofit’s market. The Food Web is also a customer, buying food for a free food box program.
At its online market, the Food Web accepts SNAP benefits — the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program that helps low-income families augment grocery budgets, a program that could be impacted as the Trump administration looks to make cuts in the federal budget.
Jones expects that cuts to SNAP could drive up demand for the Food Web’s free food boxes. In general, there has been a rise in people seeking out this kind of aid. Food banks across the United States have reported seeing higher demands as people grapple with higher costs at grocery stores.
For Brosius, the Food Web is a perfect example of how federal funding winds through an organization and reaches out into the wider community in myriad ways.
He and Sollaccio say the meetings with affected groups are not about getting political, right versus left.
“This is about strengthening the community,” Sollaccio said, adding that everyone needs to know what is going on and what it could mean for the organizations they rely on.