Flexible Budgeting Stories

Bank on Clark County taking account

LONGVIEW — Rodney VanMatre is no bank’s ideal customer. The former furniture mover lives in a homeless shelter, has a history of alcoholism, and until recently had an income of only $197 per month.

But VanMatre, 59, is working to put his life back together. He recently was awarded Social Security Disability, which raised his income to $684 per month. He’s off the bottle. He has even opened a bank account and is slowly saving money.

A $168 overdraft in 2008 had caused a Longview credit union to initially reject VanMatre’s application to open a savings account. He then took a four-week class in financial management offered by the Lower Columbia Community Action Program. As part of a collaboration between social service agencies and banks called Bank on Cowlitz County, Red Canoe Credit Union then allowed VanMatre to open an account.

“This gives me a chance to maybe learn a little responsibility,” says VanMatre, who is now looking for his own apartment.

Most people won’t fall as far financially as VanMatre, yet many struggle to manage finances and establish solid credit ratings, essential to meet the necessities of life.

Social service leaders and bankers in Clark County are now working behind the scenes on an effort to extend financial services to people who historically have not used banks. These leaders hope to learn from success stories like VanMatre’s as they prepare to launch Bank on Clark County, a local take on a national initiative.

People avoid banks for a variety of reasons: past financial mistakes, distrust or dislike of banks, illegal immigrant status, or a simple fear of large, seemingly impersonal institutions. The programs being hatched here and elsewhere are designed to lower the real and perceived walls that keep some people out of the banking system.

The first “Bank on” effort was launched in San Francisco in 1996, and they’ve been spreading across the nation ever since. The concept makes intuitive sense: The programs tap both social services and banking networks to help people move into the financial mainstream by teaching them that saving is the first step to a more stable life.

The Community Housing Resource Center and most banks and credit unions with a presence in Clark County are meeting regularly to launch Bank on Clark County. As they look to Cowlitz County and Bank on Seattle-King County for guidance, they have plenty of company. Currently, 14 “Bank on” efforts are operating or in the works statewide. Washington has one of the nation’s first statewide programs, the coordinating body Bank on Washington, and the Obama administration is promoting a Bank on USA initiative as dozens of cities launch their own “Bank on” efforts.

Budget cuts force libraries to re-examine roles « Artesia News

DENVER (AP) — A century after the nation’s library building boom, public libraries are under siege: plunging tax revenues are forcing closures and staff cutbacks, while e-readers and the Internet can make a library seem quaint as a place to find a book or do research.

Yet amid severe cutbacks, libraries are finding novel ways to generate money and are rebranding themselves as crucial employment resources for people without computers and as community gathering places that cannot be easily replaced.

“If there’s any silver lining in the downturn for libraries, it’s that it has really forced us to look at new ways of doing business,” said Audra Caplan, president of the Public Library Association, a division of the American Library Association. “We can’t depend solely on tax dollars anymore.”

Library directors are responding to the dwindling support from local governments by charging for premium services, selling passport photos and joining with DVD retailers to offer commercial movie-rental boxes in exchange for a cut of the sales.

In the most extreme examples, some communities have decided to privatize library operations.

On Thursday, the American Library Association meets in New Orleans to begin its annual conference and will address the funding crisis and ways to maintain services.

There’s no question libraries face an uncertain future. A 2010 survey by Library Journal showed that 72 percent of surveyed libraries said they faced budget cuts in the previous year, while 43 percent said they had made cuts to staffing. Nearly one in five respondents expressed pessimism about the future of libraries.

Even with the search for new funding sources, the shorter hours, slimmer staffs and declining offerings of books and DVDs have devoted library patrons worried about the future.

“Libraries are everything — opportunities to come read, better yourself, find out what’s going on. But these days, it seems no one really cares about all that,” said Charles Holt of Denver, a 50-year-old out-of-work cook who walks daily to a library to pass the time and search for a new job.

These days, Holt is walking farther because his closest library branch is now open just four days a week. Budget cuts in Denver threaten to shut his branch and up to half the city’s library branches permanently.

He said even in his relatively low-skill field of commercial cooking, he needs the Internet to find work.

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