The Sonoma Community Center, in a bold and unexpected move prompted by months of frustration with the City Council, withdrew its request for financial support from the city Monday evening.
The city council has been debating for sometime a new method of allocating city money to many of the city’s non-profits, a process which has led to numerous proposals, lengthy meetings and decisions that have been recanted and then reconsidered. All of this all has left such organizations as the Community Center, which among other things, stages the July 4th Parade and the Annual City Party, in a state of financial limbo for the current fiscal year.
Community Center officials said outside the meeting that their decision would have no bearing on either event, that they, in fact, would continue. However, they said they would have to look elsewhere for money, about $65,000, they had hoped to get from the council for such things as maintenance of the center, located at 276 E. Napa St.
At a meeting that by turns was fractious and seemingly adrift as council members sought for a compromise that would find new process by which to finance non-profits, the mood in the standing room only audience appeared to be resignation that a years long method of funding non-profits was coming to and end, replaced by a system that no longer guaranteed as it once did ample money for the organizations.
The funding for the city’s largest non-profits, including the Community Center, has been included in the annual budgets, primarily because the organizations offer services that other cities provide through city departments, such as park and recreation–which Sonoma, like most city’s in Marin County, for example, does not have.
City Council members in August decided it would be better to remove these from the budget process and place them in another category to be decided separately from the budget, presumably to give the process additional transparency.
In a 3-2 vote, the council voted to allocate a total of $240,000 to the various non-profits, though how much for each one will not be decided until probably early November.
