NASHUA — Aldermen have been asked to reverse a decision made by the volunteer Review and Comment Commission to cut program funding to the Nashua Children’s Home by 33 percent.

David Villiotti, executive director of the Nashua Children’s Home, is fighting to have public funding restored to the organization’s Independent and Transitional Living Program, which offers housing to city youth identified with special needs.

The Review and Comment Commission, a volunteer board that reviews and votes on funding requests from local human service agencies, denied a request for $31,427 by the Children’s Home and instead is proposing that $10,000 be given to the program in the 2013 budget. Last year, the city contributed $15,000 to the group when it was seeking $38,461.

The transitional housing program offers residency for eight young adults. A new high school graduate moved into the facility last Sunday, and another is moving in today, according to Villiotti.

“The seeming response of the Review and Comment Commission to the social, clinical, educational and financial advantages offered to the city of Nashua and its taxpayers by Nashua Children’s Home, an organization that has served this community for 109 years, appears to be the City Hall version of ‘no good deed shall go unpunished,’ whereby the only direct funding provided to Nashua Children’s Home by the city — the only public funding that serves a program for young adults that would otherwise be at extreme risk of homelessness — has been systematically reduced,” Villiotti wrote in a letter to aldermen and the mayor.

He is asking city officials to restore funding at the 2011 budget level, around $23,250.

Nearly 30 agencies requested approximately $780,000 in funds for 2013; however there was only a pool of $438,000 available, Alderman Mark Cookson said.

“Each of these organizations are worthwhile, and it was a very difficult deliberation,” said Cookson, who sits on the Review and Comment Commission and was assigned to study the Nashua Children’s Home funding request.

Cookson does not fault Villiotti for fighting for every single penny, but said he hopes the Board of Aldermen and the mayor will continue to support the decision made by the commission and its volunteers.

“I wouldn’t change the recommendation,” Cookson said. “It do not think it would be appropriate to override the volunteers who reviewed and deliberated on this.”

He said the commission has concerns about the Nashua Children’s Home current fundraising amounts, in addition to the organization’s oversight of its Independent and Transitional Living Program,.

“We absolutely agree that the program is needed, but we thought it could be more structured,” said Cookson.

Last week, Villiotti said the program offers Nashua’s at-risk youth their best opportunity to become productive adults by keeping them in their community where they can maintain enrollment in city schools. That results in a significant cost savings to taxpayers if the students are identified with special needs, he said — an annual savings of about $486,000.

khoughton@newstote.com