The Urbana City Council will discuss changes to social service funding and ways to increase efficiency in evaluating community need at their regular meeting Monday. 

Although the city does not foresee an increase in the $313,400 budget from the fiscal year of 2011-2012, council members will re-evaluate current need and consider additional programs that aid pre-K education and youth employment in terms of allocating the funds.

“These are known to be extremely effective and to pay huge dividends to kids later in life,” said Alderman Charlie Smyth, Ward 1. “Kids who get a few hours a week do better in school and graduate at higher rates. Those are the kinds of successes we are after.”

Smyth said council members will also discuss ways to make the yearly application more efficient for agencies who continually receive funding, including Big Brothers Big Sisters of Central Illinois and Crisis Nursery.

“We need a way for them to quickly report on what they did with the money,” Smyth said. “We also want to evaluate the programs for their relationship to Urbana.” 

Although the city received 48 applications from agencies last year, the city was only able to fund about 35 of them. Smyth said there are core programs the city funds every year, and they are unlikely to accept new programs unless there is an excess of funds.

At last week’s meeting, Urbana Mayor Laurel Prussing and council members discussed the possibility of expanding Champaign’s Summer Youth Employment Program to Urbana if the city can come up with more funding. The program partners with Champaign businesses that offer summer jobs to high school students. 

Corinne can be reached at [email protected].