Seniors Protest City’s Downsizing Services

QUEENS — A plan by the Bloomberg administration to close local senior centers drew the ire of Queens officials and senior citizens Tuesday.

The cuts would impact meal programs and seniors' activities and force some centers to close, said the officials in a press conference at Queens Borough Hall.

The city showed its inability to reform the Department for the Aging when it lost at least 3,000 names while consolidating data for its case management services earlier this year, said Democratic Councilman James Gennaro of Queens. The accusation was echoed by others throughout the evening.

The department under the Bloomberg administration has been out-of-touch with elderly citizens in formulating its proposals for reform, said the officials, who referred to the administration as "bean counters" and "bean cutters" several times during the event.

"[The department] is not Bloomberg LP," said Gennaro, who is currently running for state senate.

The Bloomberg administration proposed reforms to the department in January after projecting that the number of persons older than 60 will increase 46 percent, the total rising to one-fifth of New York’s population, by 2030.

The department launched the "All Ages Project" to shrink case management contracts, standardize and decrease the frequency of the meals served in the Meals On Wheels program and close what it believes are underused senior centers.

The change in the way the department gives case management contracts will force Linda Leest, the executive director of a senior center called Services Now for Adult Persons, to fire eight staff members she recently hired. Leest stood by the Queens officials with seniors from her center at the press conference.

According to Leest, the department also underestimated the number of elderly New Yorkers her organization services by 600. Thus, even before the proposed cuts take effect, there are too few caseworkers for the seniors enrolled in Services Now for Adult Persons, Leest said.

The Bloomberg administration should not close centers because tallies of seniors who use the centers are based on faulty numbers, according to Bobbie Sackman, the director of public policy for the Council of Senior Centers and Services, a group that lobbies on behalf of senior centers.

An 11-point plan released by Gennaro called for centers to count the number of seniors who visit centers for social activities rather than for meals.

Officials also lamented a proposal that meals be standardized and delivered frozen. Currently, meals can be made to fit ethnic cuisine preferences and are delivered warm.

"The beauty of Queens is we have people in Astoria that don’t eat what they eat in Richmond Hill," said Democratic Councilman Leroy Comrie of Queens.

There is a greater health risk if seniors have less frequent contact with case managers and Meals On Wheels deliverers, Leest said.

"Somebody is going to die, and it’s going to be Services Now for Adult Persons’s fault, not the Department for the Aging’s fault," Leest said.

"Why in 2008 are we fighting about hot meals?" asked Sackman of the senior center organizing group.

"These efforts are in keeping with the reforms that are sweeping the nation in the field of aging, health and long-term care. Modernization is critical in order to serve a burgeoning older adult population and improve the quality of existing programs," the Department for the Aging stated.

"We don’t want to be cut like second-class citizens," said Jim Smith, a "78-plus-" year-old who came with his wife Josephine and a group of senior citizens from Services Now for Adult Persons to the press conference .

"We go to places we haven’t seen in 20 or 30 years," he added, referring to the field trips that the group organizes.

"Funding should be protected," said Sackman, when asked about how to account for possible increases in cost owing to growth of the elderly population.

It can be done, she said. "We’re in one of the wealthiest cities in the world."