New York, NY – Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s administration is considering slashing in-home counseling services for the city’s senior citizens by 40%, a cut advocates worry would endanger already vulnerable people.
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The commissioner for the city’s Department for the Aging, Lilliam Barrios-Paoli, proposed the dramatic reduction in case-management services in response to Mr. Bloomberg’s demand last month that all city agencies cut their budgets to combat a $3.3 billion deficit in the fiscal year beginning July 1, people familiar with her recommendation said.
The mayor and officials in his budget office are in the midst of reviewing recommendations from agency heads. No cuts have been finalized.
Still, Ms. Barrios-Paoli’s recommendation has already sounded the alarm among advocates for the elderly and members of the City Council.
“You are really saying to 85-year-old people in this city, ‘We’re not going to take care of you. We are going to let you fend for yourselves,'” said Bobbie Sackman, director of public policy for the Council of Senior Centers and Services of New York City, an advocacy group. “The Bloomberg administration, with each deep cut to the Department for the Aging, is abandoning elderly people in this city.”
Ms. Sackman said these cuts will “accelerate the decline” of many seniors in the five boroughs.
The department’s budget for the current fiscal year is $264.3 million, a $30 million, or 10%, drop from the previous year. This year, at the mayor’s urging, the city shuttered 29 senior centers and slashed a panoply of other services, including an elder-abuse program and a healthy-aging initiative.
Ms. Barrios-Paoli has discussed her budgetary recommendations with advocates, but she declined, through a spokesman, an interview request from The Wall Street Journal.
Her spokesman, Christopher Miller, declined to discuss the cuts the commissioner recommended, but he said the department looked at its entire portfolio to “identify reductions that impact the fewest number of seniors.”
Marc LaVorgna, a spokesman for Mr. Bloomberg, also declined to comment on the specifics of the commissioner’s proposal. “The Mayor has said again and again that we cannot afford the cost of the work force we have, so we have to find more ways to reduce spending across government, and that is going to mean a reduction in some services,” Mr. LaVorgna said.
Robert Bogus, a 74-year-old Queens man who lives alone and doesn’t have any family, said his case manager helped persuade him not to commit suicide, assisted him with his financial obligations and helped him set up delivery of free meals.
“When I told her I was suicidal, she came to my apartment and took me to the hospital,” Mr. Bogus said. “She came to my apartment on my birthday when there was nobody. Nobody. Nobody. Nobody. She brought me a little cake and a little gift. She treated me like family.”
“I’m all alone—it’s not fun,” he said. “They are the only ones in my life that call me and are concerned about me.”
Jacqueline Huneidi, director of case management for Services Now for Adult Persons, a private organization that has a $1.2 million contract with the city to provide case management to 1,200 frail and vulnerable homebound seniors in Queens, said this type of cut would be devastating.
“We know these are difficult financial times,” she said, “but there has to be a better way where we keep these homebound seniors safe in their homes.”
Councilwoman Jessica Lappin, a Manhattan Democrat and chairwoman of the council’s Aging Committee, said the cuts facing the department are “unsustainable.”
“These are cuts that really go to the core question of what is the city going to provide to poor and frail seniors,” she said. “I don’t think it’s fair, and I don’t think it’s right.”
Last month, Mr. Bloomberg ordered most city agencies to reduce their budgets by 5.4% this fiscal year and 8% the next.
New York City’s fire, police and education departments received a partial reprieve, with the mayor ordering a 2.7% reduction this fiscal year and 4% decrease the following. Mr. Bloomberg also imposed a hiring freeze.
The mayor’s budget order marks the ninth time in the past three and a half years that City Hall has requested plans to close the budget gap.
Commissioners at other agencies have said cuts are becoming increasingly difficult.
At a hearing this month, John Mattingly, commissioner of the Administration for Children’s Services, said he is “very worried about how we’re going to come up with the [reduction] targets.”
He added, “Everything has to be on the table.”
Shame on NYC/Shame on the USA……for treating it’s elderly as second class citizens. The politicians want their votes but forget that the last generation helped build this country. Many went to war to preserve our freedoms….many raised families with values often not seen these days….Pride in country, loyalty,a need to be well educated and a work ethic that many younger folks will never rise to.
What do you expect from a liberal? Do you want him to throw the ILLEGALS OUT? Do you want him to crack down on illegal benefits for welfare? After all NYC is a sanctuary city, and you voted this liberal back in 3 X’s.
Now you have a chance to elect a business man, crazy as he may seem to be the next Gov. What will you do? Elect Cuomo the clown, a liberal, creator of the HUD fiasco, a career politician? Every chance you have, you keep making the same mistakes. Try electingt people the caliber of Chris Christie? Then you are doing something positive.
Get rid of Shumer’s idiot rubber stamp, and elect Die G. Get rid of the Weasel tiny Weiner, Silver, and toss them in jail were they all belong.