DeKalb city manager proposes $75,000 midyear boost for human services; agencies to apply

City Manager Bill Nicholas asked the DeKalb City Council on May 27 to consider a $75,000 supplemental human-services allocation that would raise the 2025 total from $225,000 to $300,000 to address higher demand and revenue shortfalls at local social-service agencies.

Nicholas said the proposal is meant to be a midyear, targeted supplement and recommended a brief application window and a tight timeframe so staff could return with a budget amendment at the next meeting.

Nicholas said the request grew out of repeated contacts from local agencies and noted the city has increased the annual allocation in recent years. "The appeals that I have heard are sincere from what I can tell and I think need to be addressed," he told the council. He proposed limiting the supplemental round to agencies that already received grants this year and to focus on housing, food and care for the elderly and disabled.

Nate Kloster, representing the Voluntary Action Center, urged the council to act and described local demand for Meals on Wheels. "44% of our Meals on Wheels clients reside in the city of DeKalb...Today, we are serving 360 clients, which equates to approximately 90,000 meals a year. We currently have 85 people on our waiting list which translates into about 19,000 potential meals," Kloster said. He added, "It would cost a hundred and $55,000 a year to take all of these people off our waiting list."

Aldermen asked whether funding alone would remove clients from the waiting list; Kloster answered that volunteers and staff capacity exist and that funding is the immediate bottleneck. Alderman Larson pressed whether capacity, not money, was the constraint; Kloster responded: "We have people capacity. We have volunteer capacity. So it's just funding."

Council direction: heads nodded in favor of having staff prepare an ordinance or budget amendment to increase the human-services allocation and to return at the next meeting with application materials and a short application period. City staff said they could present the amendment by the next meeting; the council did not vote to appropriate the $75,000 at the May 27 meeting.

Alderman Smith told the council she would abstain from any vote involving the Voluntary Action Center, an abstention the city manager acknowledged in the discussion.

The city manager also noted an unrelated auditor adjustment to the general-fund spreadsheet of about $300,000 that staff had incorporated into updated materials distributed to the council.