Budget Cuts Hit Mountaineer Food Bank

WHEELING — Claudia Raymer, executive director of the Ohio County Family Resources Network, was focusing on the bright side as those in need pulled through the Mobile Food Pantry — a joint program between the OCFRN and the Mountaineer Food Bank. The group would be able to provide food for about 220 households for the Easter weekend, packing cars that drove through the parking lot of the Wheeling Island Hotel-Casino-Racetrack.

Yet she couldn’t avoid the areas of concern, that federal funding cuts led to less food available for those needing it Thursday.

“There are more cars in line than we have food, but we’re going to make it stretch,” Raymer said. “We’re going to do everything we can. We want everybody to get something.”

It wasn’t until Thursday morning that OCFRN realized that there would be less food to distribute, but the group and a strong crew of volunteers from WesBanco, Williams Energy, EQT and other community partner organizations packed up several staples – meat, bread, vegetables, fruit and canned items – and handed them out to the dozens of cars that passed through.

Raymer said that federal funding that helped the Mountaineer Food Bank work with farmers to procure food for the mobile pantry was cut. That led to a reduced supply.

“It’s disheartening,” Raymer said. “It’s a basic human right to have access to food. We’re hopeful that, maybe, we’ll see it come back. But we also want to be realistic and have realistic plans.

“We’ll be clear about what we do have available and what we don’t have available.”

The need for services like the Mobile Food Pantry aren’t going away, Raymer said. If anything, they’re growing. Food prices continue to rise, she said, and people must navigate those increased costs with the same paychecks they have been receiving.

That scenario has forced organizations like the Ohio County Family Resource Network to think outside the box, Raymer said. The group has been in contact with the office of U.S. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va. Raymer has seen Capito talk publicly about the effects funding cuts have had in West Virginia. Raymer would love to have a discussion with Capito about what can be done to bridge the gap.

Otherwise, the Ohio County Food Security team, a group of organizations trying to tackle food insecurity in the county, will continue to come up with solutions to help solve the problem locally.

“We’ve had the team since 2020, so we’ve faced crises before,” Raymer said. “So the groundwork of having those partnerships has really given us an advantage over some other areas that may not have a food security team.

“What we know is we have three more distributions this year,” she continued. “We know we’re going to feed hundreds of families every one of those times. What we don’t know is how much food there will be and what food there will be.”