Fifteen agencies that provide mental health services must wait and see if the City Council will go through with a proposed budget cut before they can plan programs serving more than 5,000 Evanston residents in the coming year.

The city has proposed scaling back the $405,000 awarded annually by the Mental Health Board to $253,100 to help close the nearly $4 million deficit in Evanston’s budget.

Last year the board granted money to 14 agencies, serving 5,682 residents, 91.2 percent of whom were low income. It usually makes awards in December, but has suspended this year’s decision because of the proposed cut.

“What we do is provide support to people who are vulnerable,” said Don Baker, office manager of the Youth Organizations Umbrella, Inc., 1027 Sherman Ave., which runs the Youth Development Programs, an after school and counseling program for at-risk children in south Evanston. “To not do these services at all will jeopardize the character of the community.”

YOU gets $108,700 of its $900,000 budget from the city. The money from the city is earmarked for the Youth Development Program.

“We have no other way to get the money,” Baker said. “It’s not like we have money left on the table that we could pick up because we are losing city money.” He said his organization has not figured out how it would adjust its programs to meet budgetary constraints. But many people in the community have come to rely on the youth program.

“It provides students with a sense of belonging because it gives them a structure with adults,” said Gordon Hood, principal of Nichols Middle School, 800 Greenleaf St. Many students from Nichols attend YOU’s program.

Skokie-based Shore Community Services, which provides care, counseling and life skills training for mentally disabled adults and children at its Evanston facilities, also is not sure how it would deal with the possible loss of the $50,000 it has received for many years from the city. Currently 12 mentally disabled adults depend on Shore for housing.

“It could have a serious impact on us,” said Carl Lieberman, director of development at Shore Community Services.

Evanston’s director of health and human services, Jay Terry, who is responsible for allocating funds to the Mental Health Board, said his department had to choose where it could trim its budget. It chose to give priority to public health over services to individual residents because of the increased threat of bioterrorism, Terry said.

“All the cuts are unpleasant and we are hoping they don’t happen,” he said. “The city simply does not have the revenue to support all the expenditures.”

But Mental Health Board members said that cutting funds allocated to psychological services will hurt the health of the community. Jane Grover, chairwoman of the board, said that if less money is spent on services, the hospitalization rate of mentally ill people could increase and police and fire services would be called into action more frequently.

“You need to fund mental health for community health, just as you need to fund police and fire,” Grover said.

Grover also said the proposed cuts place a bigger burden on low-income residents than on others, ruining the character of a diverse Evanston.

“The constituency served by these funds is largely invisible so they are not as vocal as, say, the library proponents,”she said. “Evanston has always placed a high value on human services. That makes it different from other Chicago suburbs.”

Terry said he also felt he could suggest cutting the grant money because most agencies have more than one source of funding.

“It’s not a reflection on the agencies,” he said. “Private agencies have the opportunity to do private fundraising. These options are not available to other city groups.”

But agencies said raising money is tough, especially when so many people are donating to Sept. 11 funds.

“We always try to raise money on our own, but you can only go to the well so often,” Lieberman said. “It’s hard to make up from private sources what you don’t get from governments. It’s a serious problem and we are not alone in facing it.”

The money allocated for mental health grants has remained at $405,000 for the last 17 years. Seventeen years ago it made up 1.2 percent of the city’s budget, but as the budget has grown over the years, mental health spending has constituted a shrinking proportion of city expenditures. Last year’s spending on mental health made up only 0.6 percent of the budget, Mental Health Board members said.

But representatives from agencies said the number of people receiving mental health services is increasing. Kate Mahoney, executive director of Peer Services, 906 Davis St., which has received money from the city for 20 years, said the agencies will work together and present their views to the council at the Feb. 9 meeting.

“We have been active on this issue thus far and we will continue to be,” Mahoney said. Peer Services provides prevention and early-intervention counseling to teenagers, HIV prevention and treatment, and outpatient drug counseling to adults. The programs for teenagers are free, and adults pay only what they can afford, she said.

Even agencies that receive a small amount of grant money are concerned about limiting resources to needy people, said Delores Holmes, director of Family Focus, Inc. The agency offers a number of services for junior high and high school students, including a literacy program and after-school activities with locations in Evanston, Aurora and Chicago Lawn. Family Focus receives $7,500 of its $400,000 budget from the city and uses it to help pay for a social worker.

“I don’t know any other way these services would be provided without the city,” Holmes said. “So what will these people do?”