(Spirit Lake)– Upper Des Moines Opportunity continued to see a high demand for services over the past year in Dickinson county. Executive Director Julie Edwards says the agency provided nearly $850,000 in services in the county, with the largest demand coming for weatherization services and housing…
“Which is supporting your clients, your citizens, in making down payments and paying their rent if they fall behind. But the big jump in the programs that we support are our weatherization program. That’s where someone has to own a home, we go in, we weatherize it. The changes we make in their home depends on what will be the biggest return on investment, usually it’s insulation and things like that. As you can see over the past three years we average spending about $500,000 on services in Dickinson county.”
Edwards says reduced office hours they put in place this past year are going to remain for the time being…
“As you know last year we were struggling and we had to operate within our budget which did reduce some of the days we were open every week and it did reduce some weeks, May, June, July, August, our slower months, that we did close for a week at a time. And so those have put us back in a better financial situation, so we will continue to operate that way at this time.”
Edwards says UDMO served 5,526 individuals this past year, compared with the three-year-average of 5,156. She says they served 2,736 households this past year, compared to the three-year-average of 2,572.
