BRUNSWICK

The Trump administration’s budget blueprint proposes cuts that could impact businesses and communities throughout the Midcoast, from the elimination of the National Endowment of the Arts which provides funding to the Bowdoin International Music Festival to cutting the Community Development Block Grant, which last year helped boat building company Washburn & Doughty expand to a facility at Brunswick Landing.

What’s most concerning to many Midcoast residents, however, are the deep cuts to or elimination of programs specifically targeted to low income households. Earlier this week, The Times Record reported on the proposed elimination of the Low Income Housing Energy Assistance Program which helps hundreds of Midcoast households pay for their heating bills, but the budget proposal goes much further in cutting programs across the Midcoast designed to help alleviate poverty.

“It’s funding that goes back to the War on Poverty,” said Jessica Tysen. “So it’s funding that goes quite a ways back.”

Tysen is executive director of Midcoast Maine Community Action in Bath, which administers a number of programs custom designed to help Midcoast residents. Those programs are only possible, said Tysen, because of the $250,000 in federal money the organization receives through the Community Services Block Grant.

The Trump proposal eliminates that grant entirely, calling it a “duplicative” and “limited impact” program.

MMCA uses the grant to pay staff, from case managers to those processing applications for assistance. That funding allows the organization to use the donations it receives from municipalities, nonprofits and individuals to directly help low-income households. Yet without that federal support, said Tysen, MMCA programs for low income households, from heating and rent assistance to helping with electricity disconnects, could end.

“It’s very important funding for us,” said Tysen. “(The budget outline) cuts across a number of our programs that we would not be able to continue without that funding, because there’s no other funding really for it.”

The Trump administration also wants to do away with funding for Meals on Wheels, a national program that delivers meals to older individuals free of charge. In the Midcoast area that program is administered by Spectrum Generations, which runs its local operations out of People Plus in Brunswick.

But even as the administration proposes to cut federal funding for the program, Spectrum Generations says that they already don’t have enough money to meet growing demand.

“When I first started, I think we had like 80-something consumers in this area, and now we’re up to 138,” said nutrition coordinator for Brunswick, Harpswell and Sagadahoc County Casey Henson, who has worked with Spectrum Generations as a volunteer or staff member for three years.

In February, the organization implemented a wait list; it already has 19 people on it.

“The funding is not there,” said Karen Wiswell, director of Nutrition & Community Center Operations. “We haven’t had increases in funding. It’s unfortunate that we had to put a wait list in place.”

The Spectrum Generations Meals on Wheels program expects to receive approximately $824,400 federal dollars in the current fiscal year, and estimates that to be about 65 percent of its annual funding. The remaining 35 percent is raised from local municipalities, individual donations and the state.

Hollis McBride of Topsham, who has volunteered with Meals on Wheels for 20 years, said that the people he delivers meals to are worried about what will happen if the federal funding is eliminated.

“Of course, they’re all very concerned this week because we all just learned that the present administration doesn’t support Meals on Wheels very much, and they’re afraid they’re going to lose it,” said McBride. “Hopefully they’ll keep on going, even if the support is reduced.”

Last week, Spectrum Generations

CEO Gerard Queally reacted strongly to Trump administration claims that Meals on Wheels doesn’t work.

“Meals on Wheels does work: it gives seniors, who are too frail to shop and prepare meals for themselves, the ability to stay in the community; it keeps ER visits down and significantly reduces post discharge readmission rates … both have been scientifically proven; it is very effective in reducing health care costs,” said Queally in a Facebook post. “The ROI is enormous; a $6.50 meal verse a $10,000 hospital stay. You choose.”

Direct assistance programs are not the only programs directed at low income individuals on the chopping block.

Coastal Enterprises, Inc., located in Brunswick, provides loans and investment in small- and medium-sized businesses with a focus on people with low incomes. While it doesn’t receive it every year, in 2016 CEI won a highly competitive $1.75 million Financial Assistance Award with a matching requirement from the federal government for projects geared toward “low-income people and communities.”

“That’s a rare source of grant capital. Otherwise, we’re borrowing capital from various banks and other socially motivated foundations and investors,” said Keith Bisson, CEI president. “To be able to blend that with those other sources really expands what we can do. (Eliminating the grant) would limit the amount of work we can do.”

Under the current budget outline, that award would be eliminated.

These are not the only cuts that could have an affect on low income Midcoast residents. Last week, The Times Record reported that the Brunswick Housing Authority was looking to apply for a $1 million Community Development Block Grant to make improvements to public housing at Perryman Village. That program would be cut under the proposal. In 2015, money from that program was granted to develop mixed-income housing at the former Huse School, and in past years it’s been granted to several housing projects in the Midcoast region.

“We have concerns about many of the other proposed cuts and elimination and programs,” said Bisson. “The cuts have kind of a domino effect on many of the people we work with.

“If low income people don’t have many of the supports that are in place, they’re often not going to be able to be in a position to be able to go back to work and fill jobs at these companies that are growing jobs and opportunities,” he added.

nstrout@timesrecord.com