Biracial group loses financial backing

The Chamber of Commerce cites financial reasons for ending the aid.

By LEONORA LaPETER

© St. Petersburg Times, published August 8, 2000

ST. PETERSBURG -- For a year, the St. Petersburg Area Chamber of Commerce has been threatening to cut off financial support to the 32-year-old Community Alliance.

Come Sept. 30, the alliance, a group of 42 black and white residents who meet monthly to discuss racial issues, will be on its own. Efforts to get the city to replace $16,765 in annual funding have so far been blocked by legal questions about the group's purpose and biracial makeup.

"The Community Alliance is an important organization and for 32 years we've been the voice of racial equality and pointed out racial injustices in the community," said Sarah Chaves, one of the group's co-chairwomen. "I think it would be a tragedy for the community if we don't have a voice anymore. We think it's really something the city should fund."

The Chamber of Commerce has supported the alliance financially since 1968, when the group formed after a racially divisive sanitation workers' strike. But about a year ago, chamber officials began talking about the need to evaluate the alliance's relevance and its relationship with the chamber.

The chamber gave the alliance until last December to find a new funding source. It then extended that deadline until Sept. 30. On Thursday, chamber president Russ Sloan said the decision had nothing to do with the group's purpose or relevance.

"This is purely a financial decision," Sloan said. "The financial part is that mergers -- of the hospital, banks, telephone companies -- have cost this chamber about $100,000 in the past three years. We just can't keep doing everything we were doing at no cost."

Sloan said that when the alliance was created, the chamber was supposed to share the cost of supporting the group with the city and the black community. But about two years later, the chamber became the sole support.

It provides two staff members, stationery, postage, copies and meeting space for the group to the tune of about $20,000. The meeting space would remain available.

But alliance members say they need about $16,765 a year to fund two staff members working 50 hours a month, plus supplies. Members meet as a group once a month and in subcommittees on another day of the month. Their request has had support from city officials but hit a block in the city's legal department.

"The city is unable to provide funding for something we don't know what the money is going for," senior assistant city attorney Rick Badgley said. "The city has to determine that the money is going for a public purpose."

Also of concern is the group's makeup. It has 21 black members and 21 white members. The alliance's bylaws may say it will foster communication between all races, but the city can't support a group that defines its board seats by race, Badgley said.

The alliance considered changing its board makeup in July but voted against it.

"We've never excluded anyone, but there was a feeling that we didn't want to dilute the purpose of our organization," Chaves said.

Lena Wilfalk, the group's other co-chairwoman, said the group is important and has not outlived its usefulness even with other groups that exist for minorities, such as the NAACP and the Urban League.

She said the alliance had been focusing its attention lately on the settlement of Pinellas' federal school desegregation case.

Pinellas County Commissioner Calvin Harris, a member of the alliance for the past two years, said it's time for the group to come up with a way to support itself.

"I think with the little bit of money it costs, there has to be somewhere in a wealthy community like St. Petersburg to find that money," Harris said.

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