North Forty News, in a report credited to Blaine Howerton, details how the federal shutdown is landing on kitchen tables while the Food Bank for Larimer County scrambles to meet the surge. The piece quotes CEO Amy Pezzani urging lawmakers to end the shutdown and rally support for local families right now.
The article lays out the spike at Fresh Food Share markets, the heavy reliance on SNAP across Colorado and Larimer County, and the emergency steps the food bank is taking to keep shelves from going bare. It also highlights coordination with Colorado State University to support students and staff hit by the same squeeze.
The Bullet Point Brief
• New sign-ups at Food Bank markets tripled in a month. That is not a ripple. That is a wave.
• Roughly 600,000 Coloradans rely on SNAP, including about 34,000 in Larimer County. That is a lot of dinner plates.
• Pezzani says it is unprecedented for families to lose SNAP during a shutdown and calls for an end to it. Agreed. Fix it.
• The Food Bank pushed out emergency food purchase grants up to 5,000 dollars so partners can keep food moving. Triage done right.
• CSU’s basic needs program is in the fight with them. Pantry to pantry, shoulder to shoulder.
My Bottom Line
Look at me and Amy Pezzani agreeing on the big thing. End the shutdown. Feed families. I have known Amy since the radio days; she is a good lady who wants to help people. On that score, we are shoulder to shoulder.
Where we likely part ways is the why. You can place today’s mess on electeds who chose politics over people and voted against a clean continuing resolution. But if you really want to assign responsibility, look in the mirror with me. We, the people, outsourced neighbor love to a federal program and then wondered why community atrophied. We replaced God with a bureaucrat and called it compassion.
A generation or two ago, when a family hit hard times, the town rallied. The church led. We did not wait for an EBT reload to decide whether to care. I am grateful for SNAP’s safety net in a crisis, and I want it stabilized for the families Amy serves. But I refuse to accept a Colorado where the safety net becomes a hammock and the habit of charity fades into apathy.
Here is my hope in this circus. The church rallies around the food banks and pantries. Michael dropped me this email today: “Scott, you are right about the role of churches to help feed the hungry. I invite you to come see what Grace Bible Fellowship Church in Brighton (Weld County) is doing. We are a small church with a big heart ( about 120 in attendance on Sunday}. Every Tuesday we prepare, pack and pass out around 400 boxes of food in less than 2 hours. Wish we could do more but we are limited by funding, space and volunteers.”
Groups like Grace Bible Fellowship in Brighton do what they are already doing, except bigger, bolder, and with more hands. We answer Christ’s command in Matthew 25 and discover we may not need a massive federal contraption to love our neighbors well. Amy and her team are kicking tail and feeding people. Send them a few bucks. Then let’s rebuild what we lost: a culture where community shows up first and government shows up last.
Source: North Forty News
