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North Bay's Gathering Place is in crisis mode as it deals with serious financial issues and the situation is forcing it to reduce services.
North Bay's soup kitchen is temporarily laying off "several" staff members today due to a lack of funding and an increased demand for service that Executive Director Dennis Chippa says they cannot keep up with.
"At our board meeting last night, the chair of the Board of Directors voted to move, as of the first of September, to five meals a week, one a day, lunch only from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m.," Chippa told BayToday Wednesday morning.
Chippa notes the not-for-profit organization was having some issues with Revenue Canada. He says they have also refinanced the building on Cassells Street to help make ends meet.
"It's just a significant financial crisis that we just weren't getting through many of the problems that we have," admitted an exhausted Chippa.
"We were in a much more difficult position four months ago, six months ago, but much of it has been cleared up. Much of the financial problem has been cleared up. But this last bit to get over the hump. We just had to make some significant changes.
"It's the day-to-day operational costs. The numbers this summer were literally astounding. I mean, we had 78 coming in for breakfast this morning. You know, 130 for dinners and things like that. 120 for lunch. Those numbers are for this time of the month, for this time of the year, even by the summertime standards, it's just insanely high."
During Tuesday's regular meeting of North Bay City Council, Coun. Mark King mentioned the looming issues at the Gathering Place. "I'm very interested in hearing how that turns out, what impact that will have on the streets of North Bay. I can tell you publicly that I have been working diligently with both the chair and the executive director of the Gathering Place, trying to find answers to the problems that they face."
Meanwhile, Chippa says the situation has been so dire he was unsure they could pay all their bills and pay staff.
"We don't know if we're going to make September payroll, where we will make this week will probably hopefully make two weeks from now, but we don't know what we're going to make for payroll in September," he said.
"So that's where we're at. So at that point in time, we can't have payroll bounce. So we went with a difficult decision to lay off staff so that they're at least able to collect something because we can't guarantee the payroll is going to go in September."
Chippa admits there is some optimism as some social agencies have been calling Wednesday morning to see how they can help.
