Let’s make community support pour

The editor in me knows better than to start a column with a cliché, but for this story ... when it rains, it pours.

For me this past week’s visit by the Pineapple Express was a little demoralizing and kind of inconvenient, with nature pressure-washing my windows more or less non-stop for a few days.

For Jennifer Hardison, on the other hand, the atmospheric river’s extreme rain meant a bad building in Port Orchard failed on her organization once again, ruining 20,000 pounds of food intended to help struggling families when South Kitsap Helpline’s basement flooded.

Tuesday morning her staff arrived to find more than a food of water in the basement, after an exterior drain outside the old house on Mitchell Avenue failed and the excessive groundwater began to leak through cracks in the foundation. The basement, which has leaked in the past, Hardison said, was still the safest place on the property for storing dry goods. But stacks of food on pallets didn’t stand a chance once the water started to pour.

The rain, metaphorically speaking, has been coming down for awhile at Helpline, which has been at its current property, the former Port Orchard Nursery, since 2010. The heat hasn’t worked for several years inside the home used as office space, food is stored in sheds, on trucks or in the basement because there’s no large common room for storage, there’s no waiting area for clients. Even as I was speaking to Hardison on the phone, we got cut off because another call was incoming. Helpline doesn’t have call waiting. “We’ll have a real phone system, too,” she apologized when we restored the call.

All of it adds up to a tougher time for an organization already fighting an uphill battle in terms of its facility and a list of food-insecure clients that now numbers over 3,000. And then they had 10 tons of food float away.

“The timing of it is making us work even hard to get out of this facility,” Hardison said.

By Thursday the water had been pumped out of the basement by South Kitsap Fire & Rescue, there was enough food on hand to fulfill client needs for the day, and a new storage container was on its way to become a temporary storage as donations start to roll back in. Hardison says if you’re planning to bring down a donation of food, as several organizations have offered already, please wait until after Monday so they can get set up.

Soon a public capital campaign will be launched to raise money for a new building, which has been designed by Rice Fergus Miller and should bring the agency up to speed with others around the county. It’s likely to cost more than $9 million, some of which is already confirmed through grants or earmarks, and should break ground this spring. Clearly, SK Helpline needs your support now, and will again in the near future.

The story comes in context of the holiday season, of course, and the Sun’s annual Bellringer fundraiser we host for our readers to rally around a good cause together. As of this week you have all raised more than $17,000, which will be distributed between nine food banks, including SK Helpline, in January. Our goal is to match last year’s total of $60,000. The first page of donor acknowledgements appears on page B4 of this Sunday’s print edition, and I extend an early thanks to everyone who has given. Please encourage others to do so, or get your annual gift prepared, so we can collectively show those food banks they are supported and valued.

The Bellringer continues through the first week of January. To make a donation, use the form that is published in the Sun’s print edition, visit Kitsap Community Foundation’s website, www.kitsapfoundation.org, and click the “Donate Now” button to search for the “Kitsap Sun Bellringer” to make a gift online, or mail a check, made out to the Kitsap Sun Bellringer, to the Kitsap Community Foundation, P.O. Box 3670, Silverdale, WA 98383.

On behalf of SK Helpline and the others providing a needed service right now, thanks in advance.