ELLY GRIMM
• Leader & Times
The Stepping Stone Shelter has been undergoing some major changes in recent times, and last Tuesday, the Liberal City Commission got to hear about some of that.
“As the commission is aware, the City has been involved with providing non-profit funding to the Stepping Stone Shelter through the 1-cent Sales Tax for many years,” Liberal City Manager Scarlette Diseker said. “In 2023, the shelter faced closing its doors if financial corrections could not be made. At this time, the City stepped in to pledge $50,000 in emergency funding through the year’s end. Only $36,163.92 of these funds were utilized, and as the shelter has started to move in the right direction, they would like to request the remaining amount to assist in a transitional period from now until approved funding for building improvements and other expenses will arrive in July. Since all of that, I’ve joined the Stepping Stone Shelter Board and have formed many partnerships and learned a lot about how the shelter runs, and there have been many positive steps taken, and we want to make sure everyone is aware of how far we’ve come.”
Volunteer Director Ty Lewick then shared more updates with the commission.
“About a year ago, we went through another period of transition when our director stepped down from the position, and I stepped in because I could see, finance-wise, things were going okay, but adding a director to the payroll again, I knew we could do a lot better and keep that momentum going. Since I already run the Liberal Housing Authority, I have a unique skill set in dealing with the U.S Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and those entities,” Lewick said. “First, I would like to express my gratitude to the Liberal City Commission for the ongoing support of the Stepping Stone Shelter. We could not operate the shelter without your annual support. Unfortunately, we are again facing great difficulties. During the last award period of the Emergency Solutions Grant (ESG), the shelter was undergoing a transition with our executive director, which led to errors in the application that disqualified us from the grant. Over the past two years, we have diligently applied for other grants and have been awarded more than $100,000. Unfortunately, most of these grants are designated for projects rather than operational costs. We are approximately one month away from the awarding of the next round of ESG funding, and we are confident we have corrected all our previous errors in our application and will receive this funding, and this should help put the shelter financially on solid stable ground. We’ve worked with Kansas Housing Resources Corporation (KHRC), who reviewed our old application, to make sure everything was filled out properly, and they gave us some great pointers on what we could do. Once you get the formula down, it’s a much smoother and easier process to get those funds that allow us to be more independently stable.”
Lewick said finding assistance has not always been easy.
“This past year, we did seek assistance from the county like what we received from the city, but we were turned away. It was our team who informed the county about available state funds that could be used for shelter operations,” Lewick said. “These funds were at risk of being reclaimed because the county was unaware of them. When Sarah Mersdorf-Foreman discovered these unused funds, she contacted the Kansas Attorney General, who is responsible for disbursing these funds, to ensure our programs met the requirements, and the attorney general’s office confirmed our proposed use of the funds was appropriate. When we approached the county about these funds, we were informed they needed to issue a Request for Proposal (RFP) to ensure no other organizations could use the funds. We understood that, and we waited for that proposal to be presented. We later provided them with our proposal, including an itemized comparison of the grant requirements and our intended use of the funds. After the RFP deadline passed, there were two proposals: one from Stepping Stone Shelter and one from the Cimarron Basin Community Corrections, which is funded by Seward County and five surrounding counties. At the county commission meeting, all commissioners except for Presephoni Fuller favored allocating 100 percent of the funds to the Cimarron Basin Community Corrections. April Warden and Presephoni both suggested splitting the funding between both organizations. However, despite our detailed itemization of fund usage, the majority of the Seward County Commission ultimately decided to allocate 100 percent of the funds to an already funded organization. To us, it felt like the Seward County Commission appears to be only willing to assist the homeless when it incurs minimal costs.”
The shelter faced further work, Lewick said.
“Last winter, the county approached the shelter, requesting us to open a warming shelter in our unused north building for homeless individuals unwilling to follow regular shelter rules. Unfortunately, that building is unsuitable for housing due to the barely functioning bathrooms. I then volunteered the community room at the Liberal Housing Authority as a warming shelter as it was not reserved for use by our tenants or the public at that time,” Lewick said. “The county accepted our offer, and we housed citizens at no cost to the county for a few weeks. The county was responsible for feeding the people and providing supervision. Initially, volunteers filled this requirement, but a short time later, residents were allowed to self-supervise against our request. It should be noted the Liberal Housing Authority is technically a City of Liberal entity. We are funded by HUD and not by the city, but we remain a city entity. So indirectly, the City again provided for the homeless in our community, and we very gratefully appreciate all the support we’ve received from you.”
At the moment, Lewick said, only a small boost is needed to help the shelter get through its current transition period.
“We currently have about a month and a half’s worth of funds in our reserves – we typically spend between $10,000 and $20,000 a month on expenses, the majority of that due to payroll,” Lewick said. “Coming up this summer, our electric bill will also increase due to us using the air conditioner and other appliances. Talking about being frugal, in the past year, when we were trying to find ways to cut costs, we discovered one of our air conditioner units was malfunctioning and running 24/7. We discovered that, applied for (and received) some grant funding to replace that unit, and that helped us go from an approximately $11,000 utility bill down to $2,000, so we are working and looking diligently throughout our bills and expenses to find ways to save as much money as possible. We’re not sure when the funds would actually get into our account if we ultimately receive them, and we could squeak by on our reserves, but getting a boost would help us greatly in case things don’t end up going the way they should. We were awarded some money that will allow us to add more ADA-compliant rooms, we currently only have one handicap-accessible room on the first floor, and that will help us add two more rooms and do some other similar work. We’ll also be able to expand our dining facility downstairs and modernize our kitchen to get it where it needs to be commercially. Once we get this project done, we’re already looking at some other funding to help get that north building usable for a shelter – what we’d like to do there is put in an additional dining room that would allow us to have the soup kitchen for the public. We’d also like to install a laundry facility for the homeless as they come in from the street, that was something we did when the community room at the Liberal Housing Authority was being used, and we had people who were very grateful for that. We’re really good at getting grant funds for projects, but getting those operational funds is what we’re struggling with.”
Overall, Lewick said the shelter’s future looks positive.
“Getting this ESG funding will definitely help get us on the right track,” Lewick said. “We had been applying to those until about 2020, and at that time, the director didn’t like some of the rules of how the money could be spent, so she stopped applying for those funds because she didn’t want that. At that time, we’d built up some reserves, but we ran through those, and here we are now. As always, we invite anyone and everyone to the shelter to see what we’re up to.”
After some more brief discussion, the commission ultimately voted to approve an appropriation for Stepping Stone Shelter in an amount not to exceed $13,000 to assist with operations funding.
