Supporters continue Manassas senior day care fight

By Cheryl Chumley

Published: June 2, 2008

Despite the lateness of the fiscal 2009 budget hour — it was passed a month ago — a handful of community members won’t let go of their push for Prince William supervisors to rethink their April 29 vote to cut funding for the Manassas senior day-care center.

In an unsigned e-mail, supporters of the facility ask those with likeminded views to attend today’s 2 p.m. supervisors’ meeting at the McCoart Administration Center and “speak for those unable to speak for themselves” by requesting that the board reinstate the funding.

“[Supervisors] blame ’budget constraints’ [for the cut], yet this program costs the county less than $150,000 a year, and they spend millions on golf courses, a performing arts center, new office buildings, museums, a new 24-hour fitness center exclusively for county employees, millions in incentives to larges corporations, etc,” the unsigned e-mail reads.

In a tight budget season such as the county just faced, however, the chances of board members re-funding the center are slim — and for good reason, said Supervisor John Jenkins, D-Neabsco.

“No, ma’am,” he said, in answer to whether he would support such a budget amendment. “This facility was … operating in the red. We had tried to rescue them a year before by giving them advice … and it was draining resources from the rest of the [Area Agency on Aging] program.“

Courtney Tierney, director of the agency, was in a meeting and unable to return a telephone call seeking specifics about the program’s costs and the number of seniors who were served. But figures from her office provided by the county’s communications director show supervisors saved $233,169 this year by closing the center — a figure, to Jenkins, that’s ” a big subsidy” and unwarranted, given the service options available. That amount paid for service to 26, though not all attended daily or full-time, said Liz Bahrns, communications director.

“The reason I don’t think it needs to be subsidized is there are better services in the private sector,” Jenkins said. “Why pay a quarter of a million dollars as an incentive to use government services when you can get the same services for cheaper somewhere else?”

Similarly, Supervisor Michael May, R-Occoquan, expressed no personal drive to overturn the board’s decision of a month ago.

“This was a very difficult decision,” he said, adding the budget cut came on the heels of a recommendation from the county executive, made even months earlier. “When you have a decision, you should stick with it.”

Supervisor Wally Covington, R-Brentsville, meanwhile, said he could support a return of funding to the center if “someone were willing to cut something else.” But without this offset, he didn’t see an overturn of the board’s earlier budget decision as feasible.

“The money tree hasn’t grown any extra,” Covington said, adding the closing did not come absent a bit of personal rue.

The Manassas site is scheduled to shut its doors June 20, yet the county-operated Woodbridge senior facility will remain open.

“The closing creates another disparity between east and west funding,” Covington said. “And that’s always been bothersome to me. There are so many disparities all the time.”

Those now served by the Manassas center will have to look for options in the private market, like Hearth and Home, a “very similar” facility that “in some ways, is even superior,” said Chairman Corey Stewart, R-at-large.

“It has longer hours, the costs are very similar, there’s an RN [registered nurse] on duty,” he said. “The board, of course, doesn’t want to cut anything but we had to, and this program is one we reluctantly cut … It had very high overhead costs and it just made a lot of sense to shut down.”

The April vote to close the Manassas center was unanimous. Covington said he and fellow supervisor, Frank Principi, D-Woodbridge, initially supported a budget scenario that allowed for the center’s continued funding. But fiscal realities and the need to find savings eventually brought about the 8-0 decision to close.