Editor’s Note: Health care and other services to low-income people in Maine are threatened by Gov. Angus King’s proposed Medicaid cuts to balance the state’s budget. This three-part series focuses on individuals who benefit from one or more of the threatened programs.

Pool balls clack on a blue-felt table in a far corner and the sound of spirited conversation fills the main hall at Together Place, a Bangor social club for the mentally ill and mentally retarded.

On a recent wintry afternoon, 30-year-old club member Ernie Mudget surveys the scene. Another pool table and an air-hockey table are unused. No one is in the seating area in front of a television, but about a dozen members are gathered at tables in front of the club’s snack bar.

Mudget has schizophrenia, an illness that can lead to withdrawal. He’s dressed for his job as a school crossing guard, wearing a heavy coat with a fluorescent-striped vest. Wherever he goes in the couple of hours before heading to the intersection he supervises, he carries a hand-held stop sign.

As he goes from room to room, he introduces a visitor to his friends: Norman, Arlene, Madeline and others. An average of 50 people visit Together Place daily, and 513 are members.

Mudget, a sports fan, is quick to bring up the Patriots’ upset victory in the Super Bowl the night before with everyone he meets. He enjoys all manner of sporting events, and hopes to save enough money to buy a ticket to watch the high school basketball tournament at the Bangor Auditorium.

But Mudget has more serious concerns on his mind on the day of this interview. He says he’s fearful that budget cuts to social clubs proposed by Gov. Angus King will harm the club, where he has found friendship and peer support.

“I don’t want to see this place go downhill,” Mudget said. “It gives me something to do, to get out of the house and socialize.”

Services would be trimmed if the proposals are accepted, but Together Place wouldn’t close because of them, said Robert J. Mathien, executive director of Maine Mental Health Connections, a nonprofit organi-

zation running the club and several other programs for the mentally ill and mentally retarded.

Although there is confusion about how the cuts would be applied across the state, the rumors that the clubs would close is overblown, Mathien said. In Together Place’s case, Mathien expects the 17 percent cut to the club’s Medicaid budget would result in a loss of $9,000. The club’s overall annual budget is $118,000, he said.

Mathien praises the Department of Behavioral and Developmental Services for its ongoing work in finding ways to minimize the cut’s potential impact on Together Place. Nevertheless, it would be deeply harmful to an operation with few resources to fall back on, he said. The only realistic places to cut would be in staff – the club has just two employees.

Mathien inherited a deficit when he took over the organization in 1998, and for years he’s been trying to get the club back into the black. Having just accomplished that, he’s particularly concerned about King’s plan.

Lydia Wright, chairwoman of the board, explains that the word “social” doesn’t adequately explain the function of the clubs in Bangor and elsewhere.

Ernie Mudget, for instance, is getting support from his peers in his effort to focus on certain goals that may lead to his having a place of his own instead of living in a group home. Some had told Mudget he shouldn’t even attempt it.

“We’re always telling Ernie, ‘Try it,'” Wright said.

Instead of listening to naysayers, Ernie should “just keep working on it,” she explained.

The club encourages them to do things and it gives them a place to go where they interact with people who may have experienced the same problems firsthand.

In addition to spiritual support, club members can get food at bargain prices from the snack bar and pay with food stamps if necessary.

Two eggs, steak and toast costs $2.25. A three-egg omelet with cheese costs $1.50.

Mudget said he has to be judicious when ordering food. Crossing guards get paid about $7 an hour and work only when students are going and coming from school. He also goes to a soup kitchen run twice a month by the Maine Mental Health Connections in the same building.

The organization purchases food from suppliers who give bulk discounts. It also gets donations from Hannaford’s and Shaw’s, Mathien said. About 50 people turn out for every soup kitchen meal, he said.

Mudget is proud of the club, where he volunteers by doing tasks like emptying the garbage.

He recently went to his first dance there, and said he was looking forward to attending the Valentine’s dance. The dances, which draw more than 50 people, are held in a cellar room renovated by a club member years ago. Like most of the club, the room’s bare bones appearance makes it clear things run on a shoestring.

As he shows off the dance floor, Mudget suddenly looks at Janice Hinckley, a club member and longtime program manager, and asks: “Are we going to close?”

“We’re a big club. We’ll make do somehow,” she reassures him.

Tomorrow: Rural health care would be threatened by Medicaid cutbacks.