George Mavridis, the former Fernald League president and chief architect of the postage-stamp proposal, maintains that his proposed scaled-back version of Fernald would occupy 30 percent of the present campus or less. And, that portion would comprise land in the back of the campus, not the prime real estate near Trapelo Road that developers are seeking.
"We want a scaled-down Fernald," Mavridis said, "that will never have a residential census over 300 and that will allow development that is compatible with Fernald's Trapelo Road neighbors."
DMR apparently based its erroneous supposition on two plot plans, which Mavridis had sent the agency together with a written description of the postage-stamp proposal. The plot plans, however, were not intended to depict the proposal. One of the plot plans showed the full Fernald campus in 2004, and the second showed the occupied buildings on the campus. There was no way, Mavridis said, that anyone could draw any conclusions about the extent of the postage stamp plan from the plot plans themselves.
We think it's time DMR actually sat down with Mavridis and other members of the Fernald League, and learned what the postage-stamp proposal is really about. We've asked for such a meeting many times.
Second update: I posted here earlier this month about how the administration had done little analysis to support its claim of a relatively high cost of $239,000 per resident for care at Fernald. I noted that the administration had apparently done no analysis to support its claim of a relatively low cost of $102,000 for care for persons with mental retardation in the community. The administration cited these figures to justify its decision to go to court to close Fernald.
It turns out that DMR believes they did give us an analysis regarding the $102,000 figure. It's just that the analysis didn't mention the $102,000.
In the same article, The Daily News Tribune stated that Martinez, the DMR spokesman:
..said the state is working on getting the Fernald League a more detailed analysis of how they arrived at the $102,000 annually per resident in the community.
That's nice to know. In September, we had asked in a Public Records Law request for all analyses supporting the administration's Fernald cost figures. As I noted before, we received a number of spreadsheets from DMR with a variety of community-based costs on them. But nothing appeared to add up to $102,000. However, we did receive the results of an analysis done ten years previously by an internal DMR working group, which estimated the cost of community-based care at $134,247–an amount 32 percent higher than the $102,000 figure.
Now, more than two months after we first asked for it, DMR is working on getting us a detailed analysis showing how they arrived at the $102,000. Our main concern, though, is that if they didn't have this analysis available to begin with, is it now being developed after the fact? In other words, they first came up with the $102,000 figure–now they seem to be developing the analysis to derive it. Shouldn't it be the other way around?
I don’t know where you or DMR are getting your numbers. I manage 10 group homes and if we get half of $102,000 we are lucky. If you looked at most of our contracts we get between $35,000 to $60,000 for each client. That covers housing, food, transportation, and most expensively staffing. We serve individuals who have profound mental retardation and physical challenges; and individuals with mild mental retardation with coexisting mental health issues. In other words we serve the entire spectrum and we are not getting anywhere near $102,000.
<
p>I’m not arguing with you about your beef with DMR. They should look carefully at every proposal.
<
p>What we really need is rate reform. The way DMR does its funding makes no sense. For example there will be no transportation to day programs on 12/24 even though most day programs will be open, most residential programs don’t have staff during the day, and most families with adult children at home work. Why you ask. Well it turns out that DMR forgot to factor in that this year is a leap year. There is one more day than they have budgeted for. This is just one example of the many ways DMR budgeting makes no sense.
You’re right, it’s only low relative to DMR’s claimed cost of operating Fernald.
<
p>The components of the community-based cost include more than housing, food, transportation, and staffing, according to the DMR working group, which put the cost at $134,247 in 1998. The working group apparently took into account the cost of housing subsidies (from agencies other than DMR), area and regional administration costs, day program costs, SSI, clinical and medical costs, service coordination costs, and “other services.”
Without you, we’d never know anything at all.
<
p>You see this sometimes in science – you have a thesis, and do research to support that thesis, discarding any inconvenient facts of studies that don’t support your already arrived at conclusion. That seems to be DMR’s position of Fernald – two parts greed to one part political correctness, as we all KNOW that all institutions need to be closed.
<
p>Keep up the fight.
I agree that DMR seems to have arrived at their conclusions, having discarded all inconvenient facts and studies.