A longstanding Bangor recovery center could reopen soon as city councilors consider giving the nonprofit a financial boost after its day center closed last month due to lack of funds.
In a committee meeting Monday night, councilors asked representatives from the Together Place Peer Run Recovery Center to bring them a proposal for how they could use monthly payments from the city to reopen their day space and meals program along with extra services and accountability guardrails.
The center at 2 Second St. was previously open 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. on weekdays for anyone who wanted to drop in and provided low-cost hot lunches and a slate of recovery support groups for between 20 to 50 people a day, according to the organization. It closed its drop-in center and diner July 31 after announcing it couldn’t continue operating unless it raised $220,000.
The Together Place has raised more than $156,000 in the last month, the bulk of which are pledged donations that depend on the organization hitting the $220,000 mark. That means it needs about $64,000 more to reopen, according to a Tuesday Facebook post.
“We could really use your help to keep the doors open,” Joe Hartel, the center’s executive director, told councilors Monday.
If the city steps in to help the Together Place reopen, it would restore a service that participants say is a lifeline for community members struggling with mental illness and substance use disorders. The council’s discussion around funding has also sparked concerns about the nonprofit’s financial viability and whether it’s the city’s responsibility to support it.
Shea Mullaney, the president of the organization’s board, said Tuesday that they are making the proposal a top priority, adding, “We are eager to partner with the city to help the opioid and homelessness problems. We want to help Bangor get back on its feet again, by helping these vulnerable residents back on theirs.”
Mullaney said the Together Place’s plan will represent “the least expensive option” and “ready to go on day one,” meaning they could resume the daytime center and low-cost meals immediately after getting the funding.
The Together Place was not given a deadline to submit the proposal, but it’ll most likely be considered at the council’s next government operations committee on Sept. 9, according to City Manager Carollynn Lear. That would mean it could be sent to the full council for a vote on Sept. 14.
Councilor Joe Leonard, who has championed efforts to help the Together Place over the last month, suggested an agreement wherein the city would make up the difference between what the center has fundraised and how much it needs to stay open, with conditions built in so the group could keep the council updated on its operations and fundraising efforts. He also suggested that the center could provide additional services beyond what it did previously in exchange for help from the city.
The two available pools of funding that could be used are unspent opioid settlement funds and the unassigned fund balance in the city budget, Lear said during Monday’s meeting. Several councilors, including Leonard, expressed discomfort with the idea of giving money from the unassigned fund balance to a non-governmental agency.
That puts councilors in a bind, as the city’s public health department is also vying for the limited opioid settlement dollars, money secured from national settlements with companies accused of contributing to the opioid epidemic, currently held by the city.
Bangor has about $126,000 in leftover opioid funds — money that was initially allocated to the public health department for an HIV case management program that cost less than expected.
Jennifer Gunderman, the city’s public health director, proposed earlier this month that her department could use those funds to replicate a housing navigation program used in Portland called Project Hope.
The remaining balance of opioid funds is only enough to fund one of the proposals and not both, Lear told councilors Monday.
Leaders of the Together Place are making the case that their funding request is more in line with what the opioid funds are meant for.
“These funds, that’s restitution, it’s blood money for people who have paid the ultimate price for using these opioids. And this money is meant for people with lived and living experience,” Hartel said at an Aug. 3 committee meeting.
Mullaney also noted Monday that “it’s very hard to get people to respond to a new case manager coming in from the outside. It’s a much easier lift to get them to work with somebody that they already know,” noting his organization’s existing relationships with many of Bangor’s most vulnerable people.
The city already supports the Together Place in multiple ways, according to an Aug. 3 memo from Lear, including through a contract for an overdose response team, pandemic relief funds for a grant writer position and help from public health staff who visit the center weekly and have hosted HIV testing events there.
“If the City invests in this organization, this will mean the City would be supporting all or substantial portions of 3 of the 4 programs offered by the organization without insight or oversight into financial sustainability or operational efficiency. Is that prudent?” Lear asked in her memo to councilors.
She also noted that the nonprofit’s projected budget “appears balanced because it includes projected grants, donations, and other revenue for the full year,” not all of which have been secured.
The council seemed split on providing funding for the Together Place, with some saying that helping the center reopen is an essential duty while others worried that it would be a risky financial choice.
Leonard argued that the city needs the Together Place to reduce strain on emergency services and downtown businesses dealing with the effects of people living on the streets, noting that he lives downtown and has observed an uptick in people panhandling outside businesses, gathering in parks and openly using drugs since the Together Place shuttered.
Councilor Carolyn Fish agreed with that assessment of downtown, but said she didn’t think it was the city’s responsibility to revive the center.
“I just think we need to be tougher about consequences and accountability,” she said Monday, noting that the Together Place was responsible for the loss of a state grant last year that put the organization in a precarious funding situation. “You’ve provided a great program for a long time and none of us want to see it close, but it puts us in a tough position to kind of be your banker.”
Some councilors have worried that they can’t trust the nonprofit will be financially sustainable, and its leaders may return to the council another year from now in the same predicament.
Mullaney assured Fish that while “there were mistakes that were made that led us to where we
are today and we own that,” the organization’s leadership has been reshaped significantly in the last year. “We are not the organization that lost that grant,” he said.
Fish also worried that a contribution from the city could prove unnecessary if the nonprofit later secures more money from other sources like fundraising or grants.
Councilor Susan Faloon suggested building a guardrail into any agreement that would only commit the city to contributing “up to” a certain amount, so it could reduce its monthly payments in the event that other funding sources are identified.