Council donates 5K to Berea food banks, City plans a night to ask 'How can we help?'

CITY HALL – City Council has voted unanimously to offer a one-time donation of $2,500 each to two food banks that serve Bereans. The vote occurred during the first regularly scheduled meeting of December.

Per Resolution 20-2025, the City will purchase $5,000 worth of food from Lexington-based God's Pantry, the grocery distributor for food banks in Central Kentucky, on behalf of the Berea Food Bank and God's Provision, the food bank run by Berea Baptist Church.

The resolution to help the food banks was inserted into Council's meeting agenda at the last minute, after the members learned during a work session preceding the meeting, that it would be legal for the municipality to cover the gap in funds created when federal nutrition assistance payments were curtailed during the federal government shutdown.

That is according to Shawn Sandlin, the city administrator. Sandlin said in the work session that he'd been working with the City's counsel, JT Gilbert, of Coy, Gilbert, Sheppard, and Wilson in Richmond, for several weeks to find a way to legally respond to a crisis caused by federal action.

"This is just a one time deal," Sandlin said during the work session. "It's to help the food banks get stable."

Sandlin also said that because both food banks in town use ID checks to ensure customers are local residents, Council can be assured the support they voted to offer is being invested in Bereans.

There is not an official number for how many Bereans are without food and shelter currently, but according to Councilmember John Payne, who spoke during the work session, the Berea Food Bank served over 1,800 people last month, instead of their average monthly 540.

Payne told his colleagues he didn't think $2,500 per food bank was enough. "Their normal budget is $5,000 [per month]. So, do the math," he said. "You've got an additional 1,300 people."

Sandlin responded with the announcement that some Council members recently turned to their individual networks to help raise an additional $10,000 specifically to help address hunger in town. "So, in total, we've helped raise $15,000 for the food banks," he said. Sandlin did not specify the donors by name because he said he had not obtained permission to do so.

The resolution passed in a unanimous voice vote. Councilmembers Steve Caudill and Steve Davis were absent.

In another gesture of compassion from City Hall, Mayor Bruce Fraley announced during the Council meeting, that the City will host a "helping fair" of sorts next week.

"For several weeks now, there has been discussion about having a community forum, and we are going to have [one]," Fraley said. "We're titling this, 'Bereans Helping Bereans'. How can we help each other? What can we do locally to make a difference in peoples' lives?"

The event will feature various community service providers giving short presentations about what they offer and how they can help people in need. There will also be an interactive discussion period where attendees can ask questions of a panel that will include City officials and other community leaders.

"We're blessed with an abundance of human services providers, so it will be a real pleasure to get many of those together," Fraley said.

The Reverend Kent Gilbert, pastor of Union Church on Prospect Street will moderate the event, Fraley said.

At Fraley's invitation, on the panel will be Lisa Abbott, co-founder of the local chapter of the citizens action group, We Show Up, and the citizen the mayor had forcibly removed from a Council meeting in October, claiming she had not observed the rules for public comment. The unusual move left the packed chambers in stunned silence, and visibly upset some Councilmembers who used their comment time to opine at length about the impact of the incident and the risks of public comment, especially, they said when citizens bring up concerns that cannot be addressed at the municipal level.

In the days that followed, several members of the community contacted the mayor's office to voice their disappointment in the spectacle, and to encourage more involvement from the City in helping address hardships caused by the federal government shutdown and current economic policies. That's according to Rev. Gilbert (no relation to JT Gilbert), who told The Edge in an interview following this month's Council meeting that he was among those who addressed the mayor.

"Bruce was very receptive to thinking of ways we could move forward and find a way we could have a discussion as a community about how to help the people who need it," Gilbert said in the interview.

At issue for the Mayor when he had Abbott removed from the meeting in October, was, he said at the time, that she was using the public comment period to address Council about issues they were not empowered to handle.

From the top, Abbott used her time at the podium to describe hardships her friends and neighbors were enduring because of the impact of the federal government shutdown, caused, she'd said, by the president. It was at that point that Fraley attempted to stop Abbott by asking her to stop speaking. Abbott continued to speak, focusing on the federal causes of the local pain but, according to Abbott, was removed from the meeting before she was able to localize her concerns in her remarks to Council.

Later, Abbott told The Edge her goal had been to ask Council how they planned to support Bereans hit hardest by the shutdown and the temporary suspension of nutrition assistance. At the time, Councilmembers shared their beliefs that there is nothing they can do to buffer Bereans from federal decisions, but since then, the City's stance has softened.

"There's no difference in the effect of a natural disaster like a flood or a tornado that might have left thousands without resources. In that case, we, the City, would have responded," Rev. Gilbert told The Edge in the interview. "It's the same thing here, even if it is the result of something caused by the federal government."

Bereans Helping Bereans will begin at 6:30pm, on Monday, December 8, 2025. The event will be at the Russel Acton Folk Center on Jefferson Street.