BIDDEFORD — A display of frustration at last week’s City Council meeting might spell the end of Biddeford’s allocation of nearly $60,000 in budget funds to social services every year.  

After the Social Services Committee voted 4-1 last month against awarding the Friends of Community Action Food Pantry, also known as Biddeford Food Pantry, any money out of this year’s budget, the pantry’s director, Don Bisson, took to the Council Chambers’ podium last Tuesday to voice his frustration and dismay on the matter. Former mayor Joanne Twomey also spoke in accordance with Bisson.

“I try to do the right thing, and I have a city that does not support me, that is instead going out of their way … to try to make sure I don’t have any funding,” said Bisson.

Bisson said that Biddeford Food Pantry, at 162 Elm St., served 580 families last month alone, and the city’s decision to give it no funding will hurt those people.

“They’re trying to hurt me,” Bisson said of the councilors on the committee, “and really the truth is they’re hurting my clients.”

On the food pantry’s behalf, Twomey urged councilors to reconsider the decision.

“I will be political until the day I die on the things that I care about, and feeding the hungry in the richest country in the world is my priority,” she said. “Please someone reconsider and allocate some money to the food pantries. I would appreciate it.”

Stone Soup Food Pantry, at 61 Bacon St., also didn’t get any funding this year.

Councilor Bob Mills, who is on the Social Services Committee, said Sunday that the situation’s circumstances were not as black and white as Bisson and Twomey made them out to be, describing a chain of events that led to the decision.

Other committee members include Councilors Clement Fleurent, Roger Hurtubise and Robert Quattrone. Former councilor Bradley Cote was also on the committee at the time of the vote; Cote resigned from his council seat late last month.

Mills said that in 2012 the city sent a memo to Biddeford Food Pantry and Stone Soup Food Pantry telling them to merge into one organization. This was largely an attempt at reducing the two nonprofits’ combined, annual operating costs, he said, which was close to $40,000.

But the merger never happened, and Mills said this year the committee was “pretty adamant” that the two food pantries needed to stick to that memo. “We were even looking at trying to get some city facility that they could utilize,” he said.

However, Stone Soup refused to merge and told the committee it would rather accept no funding, he said.  

Bisson, on the other hand, continued to plead for funding, but amid questions surrounding the accuracy of his pantry’s bookkeeping, Mills said the committee decided to instead allocate funds to “two programs that provide hot meals to people”: Bon Appetit Meal Program and Seeds of Hope Neighborhood Center.

Fleurent was the only committee member in opposition to allocating no money to Biddeford Food Pantry, said Mills.

At last week’s meeting, Twomey said the vote is an example of the city “going against its own rules,” as Seeds of Hope never put in an application for funding, “yet they’re getting $8,000.”

Furthermore, in combatting the point regarding the proposed merger, Bisson accused the city of “forcing” the two pantries to work together when they don’t want to.

“(Stone Soup doesn’t) want to be under the same roof as us,” said Bisson. “We’ve tried to comply.”

Overall, Mills said this situation will likely be the last straw in a string of growing doubts over the method of social services funding altogether. Bisson’s “entitlement comments” are “probably going to change the swing of things,” he said.

Mills said the argument against $57,000 from Biddeford’s budget going toward social services each year is that taxpayers should be able to choose whichever organizations they want to donate to, rather than having their tax money go toward the organizations that happen to apply for funding and be selected by the committee.

Mills said this is an argument most councilors, including Council President John McCurry, are on board with. Saco, for example, stopped allocating budget funds to social services more than a decade ago, he said.

In the meantime, however, it seems the food pantry funding battle will go on, with each side sticking to its guns.  

Bisson said last Tuesday that he wants “all of Biddeford” to know about the decision, and he urged those who use the pantry’s services as well as residents to come to next week’s council meeting to show their support for the pantry.

“I’m trying to feed the hungry … and instead I get these roadblocks, and it’s really frustrating,” he said. “I’m not proud of my City Council.”

— Staff Writer Angelo J. Verzoni can be contacted at 282-1535, ext. 329 or averzoni@journaltribune.com.