By Scott Brinton
Many of Tempo's clients, already beset by a host of family and social problems brought on by drug abuse, are hurting financially as the economy continues to slow.
With offices in Woodmere, North Merrick and Syosset, Tempo is a nonprofit social service agency that primarily treats teenagers and young adults for drug addiction. Wilansky said that a growing number of patients' parents are losing their jobs, so they're having trouble paying the agencies' sliding-scale fees, which are based on a family's ability to pay. "Our fees are outrageously low," Wilansky said. A number of families pay as little as $5 for treatment.
Collecting fewer fees, Tempo must depend more on other sources of income. The only trouble, Wilansky said, is that those other sources are drying up fast, which could force the agency to reduce services or shut down offices entirely.
Looming in the immediate future, meanwhile, is the threat of cuts to the agency's contract with Nassau County. This year Tempo is slated to receive $150,000 in funding, but it is facing the distinct possibility that those funds will be reduced or eliminated.
Nassau County Executive Thomas Suozzi said recently that the county's $2.5 billion budget could fall short by as much as $150 million this year, meaning that cutbacks are all but inevitable. For now, Tempo's contract with the county remains intact. Like all of Nassau's agreements with social-service agencies, it includes a clause that allows the county to reduce or eliminate its funding in economic hard times. The cut, if it comes, would be made in April, along with cuts to any number of other nonprofit youth-service agencies.
"All community agencies providing services are on alert that they will face cuts," Wilansky said.
In all, Suozzi is seeking $4.5 million in cuts to the Nassau County Youth Board, which administers the county's contracts with youth-service providers like Tempo and the Long Island Crisis Center, which the Herald profiled in a story in last week's issue, "L.I. Crisis Center faces crisis of its own."
Suozzi has pledged that he will not cut social-service contracts if he gets three "revenue enhancers," all of which require approval by the state Legislature. They include a surcharge on traffic tickets, cameras to photograph motorists who speed through red lights in order to ticket them, and a cigarette tax. The enhancers would bring in an estimated $30 million to $38 million, according to county officials.
Suozzi has proposed the enhancers for a number of years now. The Senate, but not the Assembly, has approved the stoplight cameras, and neither body has agreed to the other enhancers. Nassau County Legislator David Denenberg, a Democrat from Merrick, said he understands that lawmakers are often reluctant to impose new taxes. He noted, though, that New York City has stoplight cameras. And he said that the surcharges Suozzi has proposed, on both traffic tickets and cigarettes, would be aimed at improving public safety and health while also raising revenue for the county.
Wilansky said the proposed cuts would come at precisely the wrong time for Tempo Group. In addition to parents losing their jobs -- and their ability to pay Tempo's fees -- the agency has seen its insurance reimbursements and Medicaid rates drop, and private donations are falling as more philanthropists lose money in the stock market or their jobs.
"If all of these [funding] streams decrease," Wilansky said, "that's gong to compromise and threaten our existence."
He explained that Tempo operates with an annual budget of $2.4 million, which makes it one of the area's larger social-service agencies. Unlike a number of smaller youth-service providers, it would likely survive the county cuts, but it would probably have to curtail its services.
Particularly vulnerable, Wilansky said, would be Tempo's North Merrick office. It operates in a Bellmore-Merrick Central High School District office at the Brookside School in North Merrick. Tempo provides the district with five social workers -- one for each of the district's three high schools and two middle schools -- free of charge. Each is certified in substance-abuse treatment. In addition, Tempo has a full-time psychiatrist who works at the Brookside office. The agency treats and provides educational services for hundreds of students throughout Bellmore-Merrick each year.
"I fear for what has happened in communities," Wilansky said. "We're no longer replacing the core structures that have made us a community. People's belief in what government should provide has changed. As services disappear, people grow up not expecting a community service to be there. What happens to the village? What happens to America?
"It's a bad world without Tempo," he added. "And I'm not saying that because I'm the executive director. Children and families need these services."
Whether the state Legislature will take up Suozzi's proposed revenue enhancers remains to be seen. State Sen. Charles Fuschillo Jr., a Republican from Merrick, said last week that he supports stoplight cameras, but only because they would improve traffic safety. He does not support a traffic ticket surcharge or a cigarette tax, calling them new taxes.
"Nassau County should start getting its own fiscal house in order," Fuschillo said, "and stop looking to New York state, which is having its own financial troubles, for more taxes."
Comments about this story? SBrinton@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 203.
