Criteria for funding nonprofit agencies and how they could change in future years dominated the Orange County Board of Commissioners meeting Tuesday.
Whether the history of each agency should be considered and how they should be funded divided county commissioners at the meeting.
“I don’t think we should commit funding forever — I think it should be on a review basis every year,” Commissioner Pam Hemminger said in the meeting. “We don’t have control over our budget. I don’t think we can make promises that we’re always going to do that every year.”
The county received 56 applications in February for 2010-2011 funding for outside agencies, whose requests totaled about $1.4 million.
County Manager Frank Clifton recommended funding 36 agencies at $848,600, down about $195,000 from the previous year.
“Last year was a difficult year in Orange County,” Clifton said during the meeting. “We were cutting county services. We had to make difficult decisions concerning nonprofits.”
Hemminger said she thinks funding options should focus less on agencies’ legacies and histories and more on objective analysis of the nonprofit.
But commissioner Barry Jacobs said considering a nonprofit’s history is key to providing funding. He said county commissioners should be flexible when considering money.
“There’s something to be said for historical relationships,” Jacobs said during the meeting. “If you’ve established a relationship with the county to provide a service that the county does not provide, then it is reasonable to give some preference to groups we’ve worked with.”
