The city council on Tuesday voted to restore some of its funding allocation for a county-operated early education program.
The Pima Early Education Program Scholarships, more commonly known as PEEPs, is set to receive about $250,000. Thatโs nearly half the amount the city has given the program in the past.
About $250,000 in funding comes from money originally set aside for the Erik Hite Foundation, a nonprofit that provides support and resources to first responders and their families and more will come from discretionary ward office funds.
The Pima Early Education Program Scholarships will get another year of funding from the city. The up to $350,000 allocation from the city is about half of the usual amount the city council has approved for the program in the past.
Councilman Paul Cunningham said PEEPs should get between $325,000 to $335,000 in total city funding. In recent years the city has helped fund PEEPs with $750,000 annually.
The council had set aside the $250,000 to fund โsolutions for child care for public safety employeesโ for city employees, City Manager Tim Thomure said. For about two years the city worked with the foundation to try to invest those dollars into a city-owned property that would be operated by the Hite Foundation under an agreement. That did not work out, the city says.
Thomure, in his recommended city fiscal budget, had recommended that the city cut its funding for PEEPs, which has been operated by Pima County since in 2021.
During Tuesdayโs meeting, Cunningham said his funding proposal was akin to something his father would do. His father George Cunningham, a former state lawmaker and vice president at the University of Arizona, died earlier this month.
โYou try to find different solutions to different issues, and this has been a really contentious one ... because we had carried this program, and because itโs part of the public good, cutting them off completely in one swoop isnโt us,โ Cunningham said. โI feel that, if we want to maintain some of our core values and be in good faith and negotiate with our community partners, we should try to make our best efforts to fund PEEPs, at least half of what we were doing, for at least one year.โ
Newly appointed councilmember Rocque Perez said the city reached out to the Hite Foundation and it had no objections to moving the money to help fund PEEPs.
