By Janis Siegel, JTNews Correspondent
[Editor’s note: This story has been corrected to note that the more than $1 million is coming from two different sources.]
More than $1 million of federal funding is coming to Seattle’s Jewish community from two sources: A Department of Homeland Security Grant Program for local synagogues and organizations as well as money from a Transportation, Housing, and Urban Development spending bill that will help Jewish Family Service with the facility expansion of its Capitol Hill campus in Seattle.
Jewish Family Service, the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle, Herzl-Ner Tamid Conservative Congregation, Sephardic Bikur Holim, and Temple De Hirsch Sinai don’t yet know the exact amount each will receive from the $308,914 Urban Areas Security Initiative, but the $75,000 maximum request available to them will go a long way in shoring up safety measures on their properties.
“Sephardic Bikur Holim requested a little over $74,000 for ‘target-hardening’ purposes,” Isaac Varon, chairman of SBH’s security committee, told JTNews. “In general, we will be using the funds to add a layer of security around our facility and address specific weaknesses.”
According to Varon, SBH received a much smaller grant in 2008, and their application was rejected in 2009.
“Without these funds, Sephardic Bikur Holim would not be able to implement major Phase 2 security improvements to our facility,” he said. Citing security measures, he did not elaborate on what those measures would be.
As one of the oldest urban synagogues located in Seattle’s Central District, Temple De Hirsch Sinai has been actively securing its facility for years.
TDHS executive director Larry Broder said it’s hard work to keep up with current technologies and increasingly malicious threats, but warns that all Jewish institutions should take their security very seriously, and not to be complacent about it.
“Our community — not other communities in more dangerous places — has been the victim of graffiti, vandalism, harassment, demonstrations, bomb threats, and, sadly, the incredible damage from a ‘lone-wolf gunman,’” Broder told JTNews via e-mail.
The gunman was Naveed Haq, who was convicted last year of shooting six women, killing one, when he forced his way into the offices of the Jewish Federation in July 2006.
Without specifying exactly how his synagogue would use the DHS grant money, Broder said he intends to meet the challenge.
“Threats evolve over time,” Broder said. “In a time where the need is to find and wisely spend every available penny, the grants go a long way to accomplishing goals here at Temple De Hirsch Sinai.”
Herzl-Ner Tamid Conservative Congregation is hoping to get approximately $55,000, reported Carol Maslan, who oversees the facility operations and membership service at the synagogue. Their first DHS award in a previous year was $72,000.
In the five years the program has been in operation, the Federation has been a grant recipient for all but one. That was last year, said Zach Carstensen, the Federation’s director of government relations and public affairs.
“Our security needs change from year to year,” Carstensen told JTNews. He said the Federation requested $75,000. “This year we will improve the capabilities of our cameras and make some office space changes to enhance after-hours security.”
“JFS requested $75,000,” Claudia Berman, chief operating officer for Jewish Family Service told JTNews. “The full amount does not cover all our needs but will make a substantial difference.”
Previously, the agency received $69,000 from DHS. Berman said they used that money for “bullet-resistant glazing” in their central office location and additional security improvements at both their Seattle and Bellevue locations.
“We have a great deal of comings and goings from our building,” Berman said. “We are open to the public and, as a Jewish organization, are cognizant that there could be more unique risks that we face.”
If their current building presents formidable security problems, then the planned 19,000-sq.-ft., multi-story expansion of JFS’s long-time and overcrowded location, the Jesse Danz Building, into its adjacent parking lot will greatly increase its security burden. But JFS expects to see additional federal funding of a different sort.
As the Transportation, Housing, and Urban Development Subcommittee chair, three-term U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), who is running for re-election this November, successfully moved an $800,000 funding request for the JFS facility expansion through her subcommittee for an upcoming vote in the full committee as part of a 2011 transportation and economic development appropriations bill.
“I was proud to secure this local investment in the Jewish Family Service’s new building in Seattle that will help them expand their services and meet the needs of the community,” Murray told JTNews from her office in Washington, D.C. “Jewish Family Service does such great work for local families, and I am proud to be able to fight for them and the local community in the United States Senate.”
That would bring JFS closer to its $9 million fundraising goal for the construction project.
“There is no vote scheduled now, and we can never say that anything is 100 percent, but Sen. Murray will work throughout the process to make sure that it gets passed,” added a Murray spokesperson.
The new facility will consolidate many of JFS’s programs within one site and hopefully, JFS officials say, streamline the process of providing increasingly critical and necessary social services.
“Seattle Association for Jews with Disabilities and Home Care Associates, currently based in leased spaces, will return to the main campus,” said Berman. “We will continue to maintain our Bellevue and Kent offices.”
“Senator Murray’s support of this project is extremely gratifying,” said Ken Weinberg, JFS’s CEO in an agency press release. “Her commitment to investing in jobs while serving our community members in need is a win/win scenario for us all.”