GOSHEN — After an emotionally charged debate that lasted nearly two hours Tuesday night, the Goshen City Council voted to provide funding to bailout the Goshen Housing Authority by a vote of 6-1.

Council action will cover the vast amount of the $571,050 needed to keep the agency running.

Goshen officials expect to generate about $60,000 to $75,000 in private donations and Council action means the city will cover the rest of the $571,050.

Republicans were able to pass an amendment earlier in the debate that would have limited city support to matching only what the community could raise privately.

However, a second round of intense pleas from a packed house in council chambers led three Republicans to reverse their stand and support a measure led by Councilman Jeremy Stutsman.

Councilman Tom Stump, a Republican, was the lone vote against the final plan. Republicans Ed Ahlersmeyer, Jim McKee and Dixie Robinson switched their previous position to support the measure.

Others supporting the spending plan were Stutsman, and fellow Democrats Julia Gautsche and Everett Thomas.

Stutsman’s plan includes several safeguards in which the city could back out of the funding plan if Goshen officials discover more problems with the financially plagued housing agency.

The 6-1 vote capped an intense debate that turned personal for some council members and left some recipients of the voucher program who attended the meeting in tears.

Housing director Pam Kennedy said she believed the final emotional appeals made the difference.

Kennedy and representatives of the agency warned a failure to provide anything short of the full $571,050 would start a downward spiral that would result in immediate reductions in the housing voucher program.

Kennedy, who said she and her staff had been working seven days a week to clean up the beleaguered housing agency, warned council members that if they chose to piecemeal city support through small amounts based on matching private funds, she would not be willing to administer the increased amount of work that would generated.

“It’s an amazing community,” Kennedy said after the final council vote. “I’m very grateful they did not let this linger any further because their are people hoping to have their rent paid March 1.”

The tone of the debate quickly turned partisan as Stump and other Republicans forced through an amendment that would have limited city support to match private support. That sparked another round of public comments from recipients, social service agencies, churches and others who spoke with a sense of urgency.

Supporters of the measure argued the housing agency’s crisis merited use from the city’s $4.7 million rainy day fund.

The few who spoke against it quested whether the city should spend money on an agency with a questionable past, especially in light of possible future budget cuts from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Nearly two dozen people spoke in support of the measure. The only person to speak against the spending plan was Fred Buttell, who argued that the agency remained too questionable and also predicted federal funds could be cut significantly after the upcoming presidential election.

After the matching-funds amendment passed, Mayor Allan Kauffman warned that he was left in a “monumentally awkward” position since he had lined up more tentative corporate support. He mentioned several groups whom he was to meet with today about further funding. The mayor questioned whether large local donors would still want to support the plan if council was only willing to match private funds.

The four Republicans then faced a line of questions from Kauffman and others, seeking to know how much they would get involved to rally the community for even more donations. Stump bristled at a similar question from a woman who spoke, saying he would not answer her questions.

Stump also accused Kauffman of turning the debate into a circus, a statement that drew a few angry comments from the crowd.

Stump also questioned the validity of housing agency representatives who said the agency would quickly shift into a financial downward spiral.

Multiple people argued the rainy day fund was the perfect source to resolve the housing crisis.

“The community has put the money in,” said John Huber, a representative of the Salvation Army. “It’s time for you folks, honestly, to stop this party-line stuff and get working together.”

“For crying out loud, get some humanity in yourself,” Ed Bradford urged council members.

Several people suggested they believed the Republican amendment appeared to be a way of killing any effort to support the housing authority. Meeting attendee Kalaine Fields called it a “chicken thing to do.”