These social services to get share of Corvallis local option levy in '24-25 (2024)

Corvallis voters approved taxing themselves, and now it's time to spend some of the funds, specifically for local social service programs.

The Corvallis City Council has unanimously approved the allocation of $464,000 to fund various social service programs supporting Corvallis and Benton County residents in need.

The social service funds come from the local option levy, or Measure 2-141, which residents opted to renew during the last November elections.

Mostly, the levy pays for operations of the Parks & Recreation Department as well as Corvallis-Benton County Public Library. But a smaller portion is divided among social service programs in the community.

The previous levy term expires at the end of this month, and for the term beginning July, that portion becomes just a little big larger: from $360,000 to $480,000 per year.

The city hired United Way of Linn, Benton & Lincoln Counties— for $16,000, coming out fo the same funds—to solicit for, review and evaluate proposals from several social service agencies.

The vetting sub-committee, comprising its board of directors, will continue to monitor the performance of the selected programs and oversee the preparation and review of reports, according to a staff memo for the June 17 council meeting.

Twenty agencies applied for funds, totaling $879,499 to support 26 programs offering a variety of services from food and housing to mental and physical health care among several others.

With only half that available, some programs received their total ask, others received a portion, with the lowest receiving 10%.

Faith, Hope and Charity applied for $65,091 for its peer support specialist program and received $6,603 of the social service funds, about 10%. The peer support specialist program provides targeted outreach to most vulnerable families and individuals in the Corvallis community, connecting them with services as needed and keeping up with their progress.

For individual programs, Jackson Street Youth Services and Community Outreach Inc. received the most funding, $45,000 each, for shelter/educational support and health services, respectively.

In their evaluation, committee members considered whether applications met stated priorities, addressed emergent issues, or served certain demographics.

Also considered were whether programs duplicated efforts to serve similar groups and for agencies with multiple programs, which ones were core to the organizations’ mission.

Programs were grouped into four categories namely:

A comprehensive list of programs and organizations receiving funding in 2024/25 are:

Food security:

Human services:

Preventative services:

Shelter and support services:

While addressing council questions at Monday's meeting, United Way's Director of Community Impact Chris Sherrod said all the organizations on the list are fully audited during the selection process.

More comprehensive reporting on the programs/organizations were not included in the memo upon request from the city because there were too many of them, Sherrod said.

"It's going to be part of our policy at United Way to ask for more information and get more data, so those are things we're gonna to be adding in our 25/26 grant cycle," Sherrod said.

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