Treats Falls board of directors fights closure

ORONO – Bracing for an all-out fight, the Treats Falls House board of directors is taking steps to ensure that the facility for severely mentally retarded adults remains open.

Board member Sofia Wilder said Thursday that the group has asked Gov. Angus King to intercede and plans next week to meet with Sen. Mary Cathcart, D-Orono, and Sabra Burdick, deputy commissioner of the Department of Mental Health, Mental Retardation and Substance Abuse Services.

A court order to stop the process could be forthcoming, according to Wilder. The parents of 11 Treats Falls residents plan to talk to a legal representative to block the closing.

The Department of Mental Health, Mental Retardation and Substance Abuse Services announced last week that the Hillside Avenue home was financially insolvent and in “very bad repair,” and that it would close within 12 to 18 months. Residents would be relocated to facilities that could provide similar services.

Shocked at the department’s decision, director Catherine Thibedeau Robertson denied that the facility was in dire straits either financially or physically.

Board members accused the state of not giving the facility enough operating money. And relatives of residents wondered why the 21-year-old agency’s problems hadn’t been dealt with earlier.

Paramount on everyone’s mind was whether the occupants – all of whom are physically disabled – would be able to receive the same level of care elsewhere. Requiring 24-hour nursing care, half of the residents are nonambulatory and all but one is nonverbal. Some are blind and deaf, one has cerebral palsy. Each requires physical and occupational therapy.

A week after the state’s announcement found Wilder more determined than ever to turn things around. The board refuses to take the department’s decision lying down, she said Thursday.

“They’re not getting away with this. Their hubris is just amazing to me. I’m not looking in parents’ eyes and telling them that their children are going to move,” she said.

An Orono town councilor, Wilder said based on her request the council issued a resolve to ask King to reverse the state’s decision.

Town Manager Gerry Kempen said councilors were eager to get the message to state officials that they’re “very supportive” of the Treats Falls House board, residents and employees.

“They’ve been great corporate citizens of the community, they’ve provided a home to a population that has always been in need of a stable environment,” he said.

Earlier this week Thibedeau and Wilder said they were galled about the way the state handled the situation.

They said the department sprung the decision on them even though board members and director alike believed that progress was being made in solving the facility’s financial problems.

To make matters worse, the department still hadn’t notified them in writing about the closure, the women said.

The director was particularly bothered that officials informed her about the closing at the same time that they told families.

“That put me in a difficult position,” she said. “I felt like I deserved the professional courtesy to be notified in private. They trust me to know what’s going on, to have a relationship with the department.”

The state’s decision is premature, according to Thibedeau, who said since she took on her position earlier this year she gradually had been getting a handle on the budget.

Things could have been worked out, she said, recalling that last year Treats Falls asked the department for $75,000 to “stabilize the corporation,” repair the roof and pay off accounts that were more than 90 days overdue.

For her part, Wilder was incensed that several days before the agency was notified, Region III Director Kathy Bubar indicated in a letter to Cathcart that the agency already was aware of the impending closure.

“For that, I’m sorry,” Bubar said Thursday.

Bubar denied allegations that the state caused the facility’s demise by asking the corporation to administer several group homes in the 1980s. Bubar said Treats Falls hasn’t been operating the other homes since 1994 and had adequate time to recover financially.

After the department made the decision to close the facility, officials moved quickly to stem any rumors of impending closure that might arise, said Bubar. They met with the director and relatives of residents on Aug. 16 to deliver the bad news. They delivered the same message to board members the next day.

Even though the facility was under new management, “the fact is that we have an insolvent agency,” Bubar said, explaining the decision.

“While there’s no concern about the quality of care people are getting today, if you have an agency that at any time can be pushed into bankruptcy by any one of half a dozen creditors, you have to be concerned about its ability to provide ongoing care to residents,” she said, noting that every audit over the last 10 years has mentioned serious concerns about the ongoing viability of the agency.

Calling the department’s decision a “pre-emptive strike,” Bubar said the idea was to avert an emergency.

“They have been on the verge of bankruptcy for so long we finally decided that it was more responsible … to begin now to look at a transition … so we’re not faced with a situation where all of a sudden the organization is in bankruptcy and we have 18 very vulnerable people to find a place for the day after tomorrow.”