The Mercy Brown Bag program at the Albany Senior Center distributes food at no charge to 60 low income senior households in Albany each month. Each month the household will receive approximately 36 pounds of food including fresh produce, canned goods, bread and/or pasta. A whole frozen chicken and a pound of rice twice in four months provide a much needed protein meal.

The Albany Community Foundation is proud to be a donor to this wonderful program which benefits so many of our neighbors.

Thank you for the column Commissioner Kerr and Cashmere. I think the proportion of students you cite as receiving free meals is actually the proportion receiving both free and reduced price meals based on the data at http://www.cde.ca.gov/ds/sh/cw/filesafdc.asp. I have uploaded a table of this data in the image section along with a graph of the combined free and reduced meal percentages.

An alarming aspect of this data, besides the current percentages of students qualifying for these meals, is that the proportion of students needing these meals has increased by about half. The proportion has almost doubled at the middle and high schools. Another notable trend is that the proportion of students needing such meals has increased in every school except Marin, where it has actually decreased.

The graph also shows the proportion of residential PG&E accounts in Albany that have qualified for CARE, PG&E’ s reduced rate program for low income households. This too has gone up by about half and now stands at about 1,000 accounts out of 7,000.

So even though Albany has the lowest unemployment rate of any city in Alameda County (http://albany.patch.com/articles/albanys-unemployment-rate-remains-lowest-in-county), the increased use of free and reduced price meals and CARE indicates the proportion of low income households has increased significantly in the city.

Despite this, the Council recently approved a new Waste Management contract that includes an immediate 45% fee increase without provision of a low income fee reduction. Last minute public comment prompted the Council to ask staff to try to negotiate such a reduction, but not surprisingly Waste Management balked (although apparently other cities have been successful: http://albany.patch.com/articles/lofty-climate-goals-new-services-lead-to-higher-waste-rates).

Even worse, the proposed contract includes a senior fee reduction provision devoid of means testing. This even though the ratio of senior to younger adult wealth is at a historic high, a far larger portion of younger adults are impoverished than seniors (http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2011/11/07/the-rising-age-gap-in-economic-well-being/), and the usual vote buying reason for a senior provision was not needed because approval of the contract did not require a public vote.

I ask, really implore, the Social and Economic Justice Commission to formulate a recommendation to the City Council to adopt a uniform policy of considering social justice at the outset of all tax formulation and contract and franchise agreement negotiation. If either of you could email me directly at pdjordan@lbl.gov indicating whether the Commission will take up this topic, I would be quite appreciative. Thank you for your volunteer work for the City.

I thought I read at some point on Albany Patch that UC Village has a food program for low income families (or maybe just low income student families)? Is that program still operating? If so, it might be worth a mention here.

Just a much of a concern is the fact the council is considering several tax measures for the November ballot rather than consider other ways to broaden the tax base in the city. In these continuing difficult times, even taxes with exemptions for low income residents increase the burden on the citizens and could negatively impact our small businesses. It is obvious neither the global nor local economy is going to rebound quickly and thus creative thought must go into solving the budget woes of the City – it is too easy just to increase taxes.

Great comments and good information. Thanks everyone. While it is admirable that readers of this article are able to draw direct lines of logic from future potential tax measures to current issues of hunger the immediacy of hunger and current need should not be overlooked in the politics of the moment. Please donate to local food banks and consider getting involved with the issue of hunger in our community. The Social and Economic Commission will continue this discussion at the next meeting in January.

The Bear Pantry operates in Albany at University Village.