PRINCE EDWARD — Upon further review, Southside Virginia Family YMCA is getting healthier.

Since February, the Y has taken steps toward a $50,000 annual savings through a shared service program, increased membership costs by $5, is now requiring employees pay 20 percent of their health insurance premiums, restructured two departments and moved from nine full-time employees to four.

So far, they have a positive cash flow of $19,000 through the first six months of the year and haven’t touched the $50,000 County loan. (Supervisors approved three $50,000 loans in February for each of the next three years with the contingency that the County would have bi-annual reviews.)

Lockett District Supervisor Robert “Bobby” Jones, chairman of the board’s YMCA Committee, presented a report to the full board Tuesday night.

The YMCA’s CEO/Executive Director Jane Schirmer, Jones detailed, informed them that the $50,000 loan has not been touched.

“It’s sitting there in case they have a problem,” Jones relayed.

The funds, a letter from the Y details, have been placed in a money market account and no expenditures have been charged to it. A written report details that Schirmer reiterated that the primary cause of the Y’s cash flow problem was that $1.3 million in pledges to pay for the construction of the new Y building were not fulfilled.

“…I think Jane’s taken the bull by the horns and…looked into avenues of saving money and generating some extra income,” Jones commented after the meeting. “And…she did it pretty quickly.”

Hopefully, he added, it will keep working that way, but he noted that the biggest thing is that unexpected things have caught them off guard and have been pretty substantial.

You can hope that those won’t happen, Jones said, but you have to plan for them, too. He noted that Schirmer’s got the County’s money and put away some other savings and started a rainy day fund. If some of the promised donations would still come forward, it would help a lot, too, he said.

Jones assessed that Schirmer understands the problem and is getting it corrected.