POWNAL – As fall begins to give way to winter and Christmas decorations pop up in stores, area residents are starting to get their furnaces going to help stave off the chill.

But, for some families, keeping warm isn’t as simple as turning the dial on a thermostat. Some who are struggling to make ends meet need help paying for fuel to keep the heat on. And while there is help out there, through the federally funded Low Income Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), that money is being stretched thin, leaving people seeking assistance to turn to local programs.

On Saturday in Pownal, Bradbury Mountain Arts is hosting the first event in its new “Keep Me Warm” concert and arts series at Mallett Hall on Hallowell Road. The event, starting at 6:30 p.m., will feature music from Kevin Midgley and friends as well as the bluegrass band Pejepscot Station. In the gallery, there will be a quilt show and turned wood by Peter Asselyn. The cost of a ticket is $10 and all proceeds from the show will be given to the Keep Pownal Warm fund, which is dedicated to helping Pownal residents get assistance paying for heating fuel. Other events in the series will be held on Jan. 12, Feb. 9 and March 9.

Kathy Hogue, a member of Bradbury Mountain Arts who organized the “Keep Me Warm” series with fellow members Lois Pervier and Liza Nichols, said they hope to make it an annual event.

Hogue said she wanted to raise money for the Keep Pownal Warm fund, which is administered through Freeport Community Services, because she believed it was a good cause.

“It’s a local cause and we don’t have a lot of those specifically for Pownal,” she said. “The need is there and it’s always there.”

The fund was established several years ago specifically to benefit Pownal residents, Hogue said. Freeport Community Services, which helps residents of both Freeport and Pownal, has a local fuel assistance fund, but, Hogue said, the idea of the Pownal fund was to make sure that there was a specific place for Pownal residents who need help with fuel to get it. And with the weather getting colder, it was a natural thing to try and raise money for the heating assistance fund.

“We just thought it was a good cause, and we thought it would be a good thing to do,” Hogue said.

According to the Governor’s Energy Office, on Oct. 29, the statewide average cash price for No. 2 heating oil was $3.70 per gallon, a 6 cent decrease from the previous week, but still 14 cents higher than the same time last year.

Freeport also has a heating fund administered by the town that aims to help residents who might not necessarily qualify for other aid.

Town Manager Peter Joseph said the town’s fund was created by the Town Council in 2008, and money comes from donations from residents, as well as some excess money from the town.

“Just last year, they got $12,000 in donations,” Joseph said. “The council has also been appropriating excess General Assistance revenue into it each year and last year they had $8,000 of unexpended money (and the council) voted to appropriate that into the fund as a town donation.”

Joseph said the balance of the town’s fund is around $7,000.

“It’s intended for people who may not qualify for General Assistance through the town,” Joseph said, adding that the town has more leeway in deciding who gets assistance from the fund, and that anyone looking for money must file an application at the town manager’s office.

The town solicits donations from residents for the fund by sending out a letter each year, Joseph said.

“The purpose of the (requests for) donations are for things that are not covered by town services. So, in this case, in the heating fund, it’s for people we can’t spend (tax) money on because they don’t meet the minimum qualifications. The only way to (help them) is through voluntary donations. The law says the only way we can help people with tax money is if they meet the minimum qualifications. We can’t spend taxpayer money (discretionally). We can spend donated money however we want.”

Durham also has a heating assistance fund, but Janet Smith, the town’s administrative assistant, said the account, which has only been in existence for the last three or four years after the town received a donation to help residents with their heating bills, has suffered from a lack of fundraising efforts. She said recently that the account was down to less than $400.

“There’s not even enough for 100 gallons of fuel,” she said.

Smith said that two residents tapped into the town’s fund for help last year, and she wasn’t sure if there was going to be a concentrated fundraising effort to raise money to bolster the account in the future.

Smith, who handles General Assistance for Durham, said the money in the town’s account is earmarked for residents who don’t qualify for programs like LIHEAP.

“It’s the last stop if there’s no help out there,” she said.

For most local residents seeking help with heating bills, LIHEAP, which is administered by the Maine State Housing Authority, is the primary source of help, but that help is limited. The program provides a once-a-year benefit to cover a portion of the cost of purchasing heating energy, which includes fuel oil, kerosene, electricity, wood and coal. It gives priority to the elderly or those who have children under the age of 2.

Deborah Turcotte, the Maine State Housing Authority’s public information manager, said the agency has about $38.5 million to distribute to between 54,000 and 58,000 households throughout the state, and that available money has dropped from what the agency had to distribute the past two years.

Turcotte said that federal stimulus money, which had increased the amount of LIHEAP assistance available the past two years, ran out, dropping the amount of money available and along with that, the benefits received by families.

“People were getting higher benefits during those years (with the stimulus money), but without the additional funding, the benefits were lowered,” she said.

People seeking LIHEAP money need to go through local community agencies, such as Freeport Community Services, Turcotte said, and then the local agency refers the applicant to Maine Housing. As long as the applicant meets income guidelines, the assistance is granted. The money is paid directly to the applicant’s oil or propane dealer, Turcotte said, or it can go toward the cost of wood or wood pellets if the applicant heats that way.

But it doesn’t cover everything.

“This is just assistance to help with the heat,” Turcotte said, adding that the average benefit is between $400 and $500 per household. “It is not to cover the entire heating bill. It’s to help soften the blow.”

And while that money does help, it still leaves lot of people out in the cold, which is why benefits like “Keep Me Warm” in Pownal are so important. Hogue said that Bradbury Mountain Arts doesn’t have a goal in mind for its four event series – the organization just hopes to help as much as it can.

“We’ll see,” she said. “We’ve got four concerts, it’s $10 a ticket and we’ll see what happens.”