Pols call for halt in senior center changes

In his January 2008 State of the City address, Mayor Michael Bloomberg acknowledged he was a member of one of the fastest growing demographics in New York which, he predicted, would double over the next 25 years to represent 20 percent of the city - senior citizens over 65.
He then announced the start of an effort, dubbed somewhat misleadingly as the “All Ages Project,” that would focus on the needs of senior adults. As part of the project, the city’s Department for the Aging (DFTA) initiated on January 22 a modernization plan designed to prepare for the projected growth of the senior community by restructuring its three core services - case management, home delivered meals, and senior centers.
However, less than two months after the mayor’s address, the modernization plan is now drawing criticism from state and city officials over fears that the proposed changes would greatly reduce rather than bolster existing DFTA programs.
Assemblymember Audrey Pheffer, City Councilmembers Leroy Comrie, and Oliver Koppell (of the Bronx) joined senior citizen advocates in a press conference Friday, February 22, to call upon DFTA to reassess major components of its plan.
According to the mayor’s preliminary budget for the fiscal year 2009, the city would reduce the agency’s budget by nearly $9 million over two fiscal periods, starting in 2008. The reduction would entail a 3 percent reduction on contracts for senior centers, meal programs, and homecare services.
The first DFTA program scheduled for restructuring is the home delivery meal program, which provides meals to approximately 15,000 homebound senior adults.
According to documents available on the agency web site, DFTA has identified nearly half of its 325 senior centers as chronically underutilized, which it defines as operating below 90 percent capacity for longer than 3 years.
In order to streamline the program, DFTA officials believe it would be more efficient to shift the assessment of senior adults for home-delivered meals from individual senior centers to a case management agency assigned to a larger regional geographic area.
DFTA has set a March 14 deadline to consider public comments on the proposed changes before issuing a Request for Proposal (RFP) in June to interested vendors.
Comrie blasted the plan as “poorly conceived” and criticized the agency for insufficiently planning how the changes would affect existing senior centers and needs of the senior adult community.
“This could cause a homebound senior to loss their case manager, home delivered meal deliverer, and their connection to a senior center. We are asking that the Department for the Aging extend the RFP process by at least six months. This will allow the providers to transition in a smooth and fluid manner, further ensuring that our seniors are not lost in the shuffle.”
Koppell noted that many of the proposed changes to the home delivery meal program were first introduced in a Bronx pilot program last year, but were consistently blasted by his constituents as an “unmitigated disaster.”
He added, “I am, therefore, vehemently opposed to expanding the Bronx model for home delivered meals on a citywide basis or as a conceptual basis for regionalizing senior centers.”