The Center of Anna Maria Island has a difficult financial year ahead.
The community organization has a “break-even budget” this year, said board treasurer Jim Froeschle at a board meeting Aug. 30.
“At the beginning of our fiscal year, we have a huge gap,” Froeschle said. “We have to spend the rest of the year closing that gap.”
According to Froeschle, community centers typically receive about 25 percent of their funding from local governments.
Center executive director Kristen Lessig said the center came to that percentage by contacting other community centers and through visits to a recreation center in Sanibel.
About 4 percent, or $45,000 of the centerʼs income, is covered by government donations from the three island cities, a number Froeschle described as “pathetic.”
“They’re getting a community center basically for free,” he said.
The three island cities have addressed donations in their pre-budget talks on the heels of pleas from Lessig and Froeschle, as well as a plea in Bradenton Beach from restaurateur Ed Chiles, although the amount of city funding to the center had not increased in recent weeks.
Limited government funding isn’t the only problem facing the center. A new nonprofit regulation that will go into effect Dec. 1 will limit the center’s ability to make use of employees, according to Lessig.
The regulation will require any employee making less than $47,476 annually or $913 per week in a 501(c)(3) nonprofit to be paid overtime for work over 40 years in a single week, or 80 hours in a two-week pay period.
Lessig said flex time and comp time payments have sustained the center, and employees typically put in over 60-hour work weeks. The center costs could be over $300,000 under the new regulation. “It’s just not an option,” she said.
So the center will rely on volunteer support, Lessig said. Board members considered implementing a minimum volunteer requirement for parents of children taking part in activities at the center.
“A lot of people would be happy to donate time to the center,” Froeschle said.
As the new regulation looms over the horizon, the center must find ways to establish sustainable sources of funding to avoid accumulating debt for the next fiscal year, said Froeschle.
In other business, Lessig said that an improved security system will be installed sometime in the fall at the center, including a finger-scanning program for parents picking up children. Two scanners will cost the center about $2,400.