More for skaters and crosswalks, less for the homeless

Sam Aitken
Published: July 5, 2008

Did you ever have one of those days when you were so upset that your mouth was so dry you couldn’t talk?

I am the director of Culpeper Community Development Corporation. We operate three shelters for the homeless in Culpeper. Last year we sheltered 78 people for a total of 4,041 nights. We think we provide a valuable service to the town and county.

In addition to the shelters, we provide a variety of programs to help people at risk of becoming homeless. This service helped over 1,000 additional people in the past year. In declining economic times such as we are in, our workload becomes almost impossible. With a staff of three and a very modest budget, we struggle to help people.

Each year CCDC has asked the county and town for a modest amount of money for support; they have graciously given us $5,000 each yearly.

We think we have a very essential and cost-effective program that is a major benefit to this community. To put things in perspective, Fauquier County gives the shelter in Fauquier $100,000-plus each year. In Orange they donate the building used for their shelter program — a significant donation.

Since neither the town nor county had the courtesy to send us a letter notifying us that this year we would be receiving $2,500, instead of $5,000, I went around to their offices to ask what our allocation would be. There was some confusion at both offices, but finally I was told that there was a reduction because of budget constraints.

I’m still puzzled. The town has enough money to hire the new position of “information officer” at $30/hr. They had enough money ($140,600 for phase one) to put in unneeded “simulated brick crosswalks.”

And in Tuesday’s paper I see that the town has enough money ($32,000) to do more repairs to the skateboard ramps. Maybe it would be better to get the kids to make the repairs and they would take care of the property. Maybe it would be a good idea to have some supervision there, as was originally promised by the town. One in 10 kids uses a helmet. I wonder how much time and money is spent each year picking up the trash around the ramps and fishing trash and bicycles out of Mountain Run?

The county is spending an awful lot of money on David Cox as he exits, right?

I hate to sound ungrateful for both of the donations by the town and county, but it would appear that they have very different priorities and that the low-income and poor of Culpeper don’t count. It’s the principal as much as the need for funding and support.

I have used the donations in the past to leverage money from the outside to help Culpeper. We have brought in millions. This year, it should be around $200,000-plus. I am now embarrassed to tell these funding sources how little Culpeper cares.

To me, the fiscal behavior of both the town and county screams consolidation.

Sam Aitken is executive director of Culpeper CCDC & Shelters.