Agencies can appeal cuts, but ...

There will be appeals.

They likely will fail.

United Way officials acknowledged the former and hinted at the latter while answering Observer questions before this week's agency cuts were made public.

"Yes, there will be many agencies who will appeal," said Michael Smith, head of Center City Partners and a United Way of Central Carolinas volunteer. That's to be expected given that the United Way cut money to agencies by an average of 35 percent - with one-fifth of agencies seeing program dollars cut by 50 percent or more.

But, warns United Way official Chris Jackson, the bar for a successful appeal will be high: "It's really got to be a fundamentally poor decision from the council, or they were using some incorrect data."

Says Andy Elliott, head of the committee of volunteers who decided how the money would be spent: "It's not as if we put aside money for appeals."

Agencies have two weeks to make a formal protest.