Bush's budget could hurt Utah's needy

If President Bush gets his way on next year's budget, Don Anderson sees a lot of learning opportunities for at-risk children being uprooted.

Gardening is a natural metaphor to describe what's at stake for Anderson, who is head of the Wasatch Community Gardens and directs a program that includes weekly classes for low-income, inner-city kids on growing and selling the fruits and vegetables of their labors.

While $10,000 doesn't seem like a lot, the allocation of community development block grant money from Salt Lake City to Anderson's slim budget is vital.

"It is critical for us," Anderson said. "Our classes are the vehicle by which we teach other things to these kids, where they are learning how to enter into a cooperative venture, creating a community and completing a project together. They learn self-worth, self-esteem; the gardening is simply the tool."

As it stands, however, Utah could lose half of its nearly $23 million in CDBG money or see it possibly eliminated altogether under Bush's proposed budget cuts in discretionary domestic spending.

Part of those cuts involve moving the CDBG program from the Department of Housing and Urban Development to the Department of Commerce.

The plan calls for the consolidation of the 30-year-old CDBG program with 17 other programs into a new "Strengthening America's Communities Grant."

Funding for CDBG alone was at $4.1 billion last year. Under Bush's proposal, which is being retooled in Congress, the entire funding for the 18 programs would be $3.7 billion, an immediate 33 percent reduction.

Advocates, joined by city and county officials, fear that aside from looming reductions, a possible new funding formula might eliminate Utah's CDBG allocation altogether because the allocation could be tied to poverty and unemployment rates.

"The Bush administration's proposal to only fund programs in communities with high poverty rates will pit the needy people of Salt Lake City against needy people in more densely populated major cities like Chicago and Los Angeles," Salt Lake Mayor Rocky Anderson warned in a speech earlier this month.

This fiscal year, Salt Lake City received $4.6 million in CDBG funds, 15 percent of which can be directed to public service or social service programs.

The other money can be used to pay for capital needs in these programs, such as the purchase of kitchen equipment for the Salvation Army or funneled to the rehabilitation of low to moderate income neighborhoods.

For Charles Davis, CDBG money helped support a program he says has turned his life around.

Last year, the retired auto mechanic was struck with the death of his sister and brother within a couple months, setting off bouts of binge drinking that eventually left him homeless.