H2GO to add Brunswick Family Assistance to customer donation program
By Brian Slattery, Tuesday, May 29, 2018 at 6:08 pm
This article is excerpted from and Copyright 2018 by The Brunswick Beacon.
LELAND — Brunswick Regional Water and Sewer H2GO board members agreed to add Brunswick Family Assistance to ITS Operation Round Up Program at the May 22 meeting, held at the Leland commissioners’ meeting room.
Stephanie Bowen, BFA executive director, gave a presentation at H2GO’s April 17 board meeting at the invitation of Commissioner Trudy Trombley.
BFA is a nonprofit that offers financial assistance, rental assistance, job skills training and financial literacy classes in Shallotte and opened a second full time office in Leland to assist individuals and families in crisis.
The new office is open from 9 a.m. to noon and 1 to 4:30 p.m. Mondays through Fridays in the Leland Business Center, 324-I Village Road behind the new Domino’s Pizza.
BFA also runs a food pantry in both offices and organizes Christmas gift and commodities distributions out of Shallotte for recipients countywide.
Following Bowen’s presentation, all five H2GO board members — chairman Jeff Gerken, Trombley, Bill Beer, Ron Jenkins and Rodney McCoy — pledged to each donate $100 to BFA at the April meeting.
At the May meeting, they approved directing customer donations to BFA through Operation Round Up, which was created in 2016 to allow H2GO customers to round their bills up to the next dollar with the additional contribution going to local charities.
H2GO uses the example of a customer with a monthly water bill of $46.55 rounding their bill up to $47 so Operation Round Up receives a donation of 45 cents that month.
Trombley made a motion to put BFA on the Operation Round Up Program list for fiscal year 2018-19.
Jenkins asked if only BFA would receive the donations for the next year.
In previous years, charities selected for Operation Round Up included Manna Ministries and the Brunswick Community College Foundation.
“I never said it would be only one. We can do one quarter for one organization, one quarter for another,” Trombley said. She amended her motion to rotate donations quarterly.
Gerken said he supported adding BFA, as it can assist some H2GO customers.
Board members voted unanimously to add BFA to the program. Other charities to receive donations were not designated at the May meeting.
Brian Slattery is a staff writer for the Beacon. Reach him at 754-6890 or bslattery@brunswickbeacon.com.
Copyright 2018 The Brunswick Beacon. The Brunswick Beacon is your source for local news, sports, events and information in Brunswick County, North Carolina and surrounding areas.
