For the Hub City Times

MARSHFIELD – There’s a special meeting in Marshfield on Aug. 29, and eight nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) will ask the common council for funding as part of their next city budget.

City administrator Steve Barg says the meeting’s part of a new policy that was passed last December to help city leaders decide who’s eligible to receive city funds, and who’s not.

That new policy required NGOs to have indicated by an Aug. 1 deadline if they wanted to be included in the presentation.  The new process also ensures that city officials wouldn’t be confronted with last minute funding requests as they prepare next year’s budget.

“That (meeting) is when what we call the non-governmental organizations will be coming forward, and they’ll say here’s what we do, here’s why we think it’s good for the city,” Barg explained.  “And the council will ask questions.  They’ll ask how this benefits the citizens and how many people are served by your program.”

Information from the meeting will then guide city leaders as they decide what to fund as they work through this year’s upcoming budget process.

“No decisions will be made that night,” according to Barg.  “They’ll just take the feedback they get, and fold it into the budget process which then begins soon afterwards.”

Barg says the city’s total expenditure on NGOs is usually around $18,000 annually, and past recipients have included the Civic Band, the Palm Sunday Choir, the school crossing guard program, and the North Wood County Historical Society who oversees the upkeep of the historic Upham Mansion.

Some other organizations that have received city funding in the past are the Marshfield Area Pet Shelter, and the heroin prevention program.

That meeting is open to the public and starts at 6 p.m. Thursday evening at Marshfield City Hall.