By Scott Brinton
From ages 14 to 19, he had spent 26 months locked up there, in addition to doing time in Greene Prison in upstate New York, though he declined to say for what. Keeping him in jail cost Nassau County $136,500, he said.
When Paul was released, he found STRONG (Struggling to Reunite Our New Generation), a Hempstead-based nonprofit social-service agency that aims to give troubled youth the job and life skills they need to become productive citizens.
Paul, who was recruited into a gang at 12, recently earned his graduate equivalency degree, and STRONG University, an offshoot of the STRONG program, helped him write a resume and gave him a job doing office work. Paul also performs community service, speaking to young people about why they should stay clean, as well as cleaning up garbage and graffiti. Eventually, he wants to attend SUNY-Stony Brook to earn a bachelor's in social work and help kids.
Paul was one of an estimated 500 people who turned out for a rally last Thursday at the Nassau County Executive and Legislative Building in Mineola. They were protesting cuts to more than 40 nonprofit agencies that Nassau hires to provide social services for county residents, many from the area's poorest neighborhoods. Sixteen to 20 agencies will lose all of their county funding at the end of March. The others will have their contracts reduced by 50 to 75 percent.
STRONG, which receives a $220,000 contract from Nassau County each year, is losing 67 percent of it funding, which jeopardizes its future, according to Sergio Argueta, the group's executive director and founder.
The possibility that STRONG might close worries Paul. Through the organization, he said, "I've learned there is a chance for youth in my community."
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. Suozzi is slashing $4.5 million from the Nassau Youth Board, which administers the county's contracts with youth-service providers like STRONG.
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. The state Senate, but not the Assembly, has approved the stoplight cameras, but neither body has agreed to the other enhancers.
On Feb. 18, all social-service agencies that contract with Nassau County received certified letters notifying them how much their contracts would be reduced. Argueta said, "You've left a bunch of crippled agencies that can't do much."
He predicted a rise in crime in the coming years if the cuts remain in place, noting that STRONG, like any number of other agencies, aims to prevent violence by keeping young people off the street and out of gangs. STRONG social workers spend a good deal of time in Roosevelt and Uniondale. The two communities comprise 1 percent of Nassau's population, but 58 percent of all murders in the county are committed there, Argueta said.
Myrnissa Stone, executive director of the Martin Luther King Jr. Center in Long Beach, said she was told that her county contract, worth $207,000, would be reduced by 75 percent, effective March 31. "We cannot afford these cuts," said Stone, who took over last year as executive director of the center, which has been around since the 1970s. "We're gone."
The MLK Center, Stone said, provides after-school tutoring for 55 Long Beach students, primarily from the community's low-income, minority neighborhoods. It also offers an after-school recreation program for up to 150 children.
Linda Leonard, executive director of the Long Island Crisis Center in Bellmore, said the county contract for the center's 24-hour, seven-day-a-week suicide-prevention hotline was cut by two-thirds, from $257,000 to $88,000. In addition, the center lost all funding - $95,000 - for its gang-prevention program and alcohol-abuse hotline.
Leonard said the crisis center could survive on savings for a short time, but not indefinitely. "For a little while we'll scrape by, because we've had generous donors," she said with a tinge of resignation in her voice.
The Bellmore-Merrick Youth Sports Consortium had its $6,000 county contract cut by 75 percent. The consortium, a project of the Community Wellness Council, provides training in positive coaching for local Little League and Police Activities League leaders, said Fran Licausi, the council's executive director.
The Wellness Council is funded primarily by state grants and private donations. With New York state looking to dramatically reduce spending because of a $15 billion budget gap, the Wellness Council's state funding is up in the air. "We have funding until June," Licausi said. "After that, I have no idea where the Wellness Council is headed."
In addition to parent education programs, the council runs a substance-free post-prom party to keep high school seniors safe on prom night. Last June, the party attracted more than 100 students from Calhoun, Kennedy and Mepham high schools.
Peter Levy, president of the Nassau County Coalition of Youth Service Agencies, said his group would continue to fight the county cuts with protest marches and letter-writing campaigns. "This is one of the worst weeks Nassau County youth services have faced," Levy told the crowd at the rally.
"It used to be that Nassau County was a place people wanted to move to ...," he continued. "We can't let a budget problem affect kids."
Levy said that Suozzi has asked the social-service agencies to lobby state legislators for the enhancers needed to save youth services. Youth-service agencies would help in that fight, Levy said, but in the meantime, the county should maintain funding for the Youth Board. "If these budget cuts go through," he said, "lives will be lost."
"They always seem to attack the young and the defenseless," said Eon Baily, a youth advocate at the Five Towns Community Center. "Our youth are our future ... We must come together as a community and fight."
Comments about this story? SBrinton@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 203.
