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HIGH POINT – High Point City Council approved funding and a contract for a program that will help convicted felons get back to work. The America Works Project will cost taxpayers $45,000 and help 33 ex-offenders. Some council members think the project and its expenses aren't what the city needs.

But officials at High Point Community Against Violence hope the program will be the key to getting people with a criminal past back in the workforce and earning a paycheck.

“We know that if an offender goes back to work, they are no longer a $27,000 a year drain on North Carolina because of them being in prison, but they are now engaging in employment and paying taxes,” High Point Community Against Violence Executive Director Jim Summey said.

To start, the America Works Project will provide 33 offenders with job training and placement as well as retention services. It will cost $100,000 for the program. $45,000 of that money will come from the city, while private money will pay for the remaining $55,000.

Summey hopes it will be an added asset to what's happening in High Point to reduce crime.

“This is about keeping these felons from re-offending and keeping them from being the problem that often times they are to all of us, either directly or indirectly,” he said.

But not everyone is on board with the project. Several city council members say they won't support a plan that puts felons to work when the city's unemployment rate is so high.

“If I was unemployed and I couldn't make ends meet and I was out here suffering, that would be a slap in the face to me,” city councilman Mike Pugh said.

Pugh is one of three council members that said no to the project Tuesday night. He says he'd like to see the city support similar programs like Joblinks that help everyone before creating a new one solely for felons.

“There are programs in High Point already to help those people,” he said. “There are people willing to help those people, but you don't take tax dollars and put it in that direction when we have so many people who are suffering.”

“When we're reducing violent crime, we're reducing it for everybody, the working and the unemployed,” Summey said.

Right now it's only a pilot program, but officials hope it will become permanent. The America Works Project is expected to get under way in the next three months.