The Franklin Reporter & Advocate Eight Villages, One Community
Franklin Food Bank executive director Derek Smith walked into the October 28 Township Council meeting prepared to tell members about the dire situation many township residents face should the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program end on November 1.
Smith walked out of the meeting with a check for $5,000 from a local mosque and a commitment from the Council for $10,000 more to help the food bank meet the expected surge in clients should funding stop for the program, as expected.
“You really want to make a brother cry,” Smith said at one point during the meeting.
Funding for the program, colloquially known as SNAP, is set to expire on October 31 due to the federal government shutdown. That means that the SNAP debit cards used by more than 3,600 Franklin residents will not be reloaded on November 1.
Franklin residents comprise more than 30 percent of all Somerset County residents in the SNAP program, Smith told the Council.
“At the Food Bank, our current capacity is built to serve approximately 100 to 120 families every day,” Smith said. “We distribute about 3.5 million pounds of food annually. We are now preparing for a surge of families in need that could be two to three times what we serve now.”
“We are down about 35 percent in food donations from the Department of Agriculture, and yet we’re up about 35 percent in neighbors knocking on our doors, asking for access to healthy, nutritious, and culturally relevant food,” Smith said. “The resulting demand will immediately overwhelm existing emergency food resources.”
One of the things the food bank is doing, Smith said, is expanding its partnerships with supermarkets in Somerset and Middlesex counties.
“We’re targeting food drives with houses of worship, corporations, Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts, and community-based organizations,” he said. “We’re also partnering with organizations that are partnering themselves with university dining halls, local restaurants, and corporations for unused prepared food to increase ready-to-eat options.”
“We try our best to serve six or seven families every 15 minutes in the food bank,” he said. “When’s the last time you went grocery shopping and spent 15 minutes grocery shopping? We are looking to increase it to eight or nine families every 15 minutes to try to meet the growing need.”
“So this is a call to action,” Smith said. “We require immediate coordinated action from this council and from this community. Our current structure at the Franklin Food Bank allows us to bend, but without your collective support, we may break under the weight of this impending crisis.”
“Council, you continue to support the Franklin Food Bank as a collective body and as individuals,” he said. “You are always on the front lines with us.”
Smith had no sooner ended his presentation than Township Councilman Carl Wright (D-Ward 4) made a motion.
“I’d like to help the food bank because I think it’s a worthy effort,” Wright said. “And as he says, this Council, this town has always been supportive. And I want to make this announcement on behalf of Franklin Township, the amount of $10,000 from the American Rescue Plan to the Franklin Township Food Bank.”
The American Rescue Plan was a federal funding program designed to help communities across the country recover from the Covid-19 pandemic and shutdown.
Township Manager Robert Vornlocker said that $10,000 is pretty much what’s left of the nearly $6.8 million the Township received through the ARP.
“Councilman Wright said, I can think of no better use for that other than this, and that’s why he recommended what he just recommended,” Vornlocker said. “And I couldn’t agree more.”
“I think that it’s a fitting way for us to expend all of those funds that, ironically, we received from the federal government, who is now cutting us off,” he said. “I think there is a certain amount of irony in all of that.”
Township Councilmember Ed Potosnak (D-Ward 1) thanked Smith for his leadership.
“Clearly, we need your leadership in Washington and folks to come together because it’s so disheartening to know that families are going to not be able to eat and survive in a country as wonderful as America because of political disruption and childishness and the inability to put people over politics,” he said.
“And it’s just really heartbreaking,” he said. “As we come up to this deadline, I think all of us are going to need to do more, but also find a way in our civic responsibility to put pressure on the folks that are really causing this problem. And it’s very un-American.”
Deputy Mayor Shepa Uddin noted that it’s not just food that the food bank provides its customers.
“it’s not just food, it’s so much more than that,” she said. “It’s your typical average needs and necessities that you have at home.”
“I think we have to continue doing now even more because of what’s happening nationally,” she said. “And it’s impacting right here at home. It’s going to impact our friends, our family members, our neighbors.”
The Council unanimously passed the $10,000 allocation, but that wasn’t all.
Kharazi, an official with the Masjid-e-Ali mosque, said he called a colleague at the mosque to tell them about the impending crisis and to ask if there is anything they could do.
“And Derek, I’m very happy to let you know that I have a check for $5,000 from Masjid-e-Ali,” Kharazi said.
Kharazi said that he was trying to “mobilize some resources for you as well,” and that he will start with the Franklin Township Interfaith Council, and “that team can play an active role in reaching out to houses of worship and get more money.”
“We’ll continue to work with you and look for ways we can help to everyone out there,” Mayor Phil Kramer told Smith. “In the Jewish tradition, if you do a kindness, it’s a mitzvah, a blessing. If you do it without telling anyone, it’s a double mitzvah, a double blessing. I’m going to give up one of my mitzvahs to say … I give monthly. But I gave a substantial amount in addition to that when I heard this call.”
“So please, out there, if you can, if you have the means, if you’re one of the people such as me, who’s not being affected directly by what’s going on here, it’s time to give,” Kramer said.
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