AURORA | Aurora’s City Council demurred on taking steps to restart the Morning Star Adult Day Program on Monday, instead offering early support for a community needs assessment targeting older adults.
Established by a community task force more than 30 years ago, the Morning Star Adult Day Program offered meals, activities and some health care services to adults over the age of 55 suffering from memory disorders and other health problems. Caregivers and families leaned on the program to help keep loved ones out of long-term care facilities.
Like many facilities that catered to older adults, Morning Star shut its doors with the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic. Parks, Recreation & Open Space Department director Brooke Bell told the council on Monday that staffers kept in touch with the families of clients for about a year, checking up on them and supplying meals to 11 households.
But families and even some city officials say they were kept out of the loop when the final decision was made to terminate the program. Staffers broke the news at a January meeting of the Aurora Commission for Older Adults, prompting the chair of the commission as well as councilmember Angela Lawson to demand answers from staffers at a January council meeting.
On Monday, city manager Jim Twombly apologized to the council for not including them in the discussion about ending the program, saying the city knew in May 2021, when the Aurora Center for Active Adults reopened, that continuing the program would be a challenge.
“It didn’t make it to council discussions over the summer or in the budget workshop, and it has languished, kind of, since that time,” Twombly said. “That discussion really should have taken place six or eight months ago.”
Bell said some of the challenges faced by Morning Star prior to COVID-19 included staffing, specifically filling part-time and seasonal positions for certified nursing assistants, as well as “lagging” reimbursements from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, with payments falling behind by years.
She said an average of 14-17 people attended the program each day over the past decade. The program cost around $440,000 each year but theoretically broke even with reimbursements. Bell estimated that restarting the program would cost an additional $165,000, in part to increase wages to attract medical staff.
Council members split on the idea of restarting the program, with Lawson calling it “one-of-a-kind,” while Mayor Mike Coffman and Francoise Bergan questioned whether the need that Morning Star filled wouldn’t be met better by the private sector.
“This is just a waste of taxpayer dollars,” Coffman said. “There’s a reason why we’re maybe the only one in the country doing it.”
Bergan also said she was uncomfortable with the idea of city-run health care services and the fact that those services were based in a single ward. Councilmember Alison Coombs argued in favor of restarting Morning Star, stressing how important it was for families to trust providers of respite care.
“The families that are going to this program are families that have been going there for a while,” Coombs says. “It’s easy to treat these programs as interchangeable, but they are not necessarily.”
“This is a program that a lot of our seniors have relied on,” Lawson said.
Council members did not oppose an assessment of the needs of older adults in Aurora moving forward. However, while Coombs, Lawson, Juan Marcano, Ruben Medina and Crystal Murillo said they supported restarting the program, they did not garner enough support to move an item forward from the study session.
A waste of taxpayer money?! Exactly what “private sector” alternative is available for these folks? Yes, let’s abandon people unable to advocate for themselves.
“Questions remain after Aurora reportedly axes Morning star program for special needs adults” The headliner last months Sentinel on this same story.
The study session Monday night a few staff members connected with Parks and Recreation(PROS) were there to try to explain exactly what was going on. What we learned was PROS is/ was engaged in operating a city run – adult care, quasi -health care business. The “certified caretakers the Morning Star employed were recognized as fully employed by the city. In short, the city of Aurora (PROS) ran a “certified” health department, as a mystery to others in the city. No one publicly in the know has acknowledged the deeper facts that are now coming out. We know, CM Combs, CM Murillo, had attended meetings directly with managers of this program and were either at the facility or in face to face conferences. Then they came away most pleased with what they saw and perceived. Unfortunately,, these two were totally clueless to what the programs business day to day mechanics even looked like. The city manager Jim Twombly, also for some reason held back information for over six months that he apologized to council for not being timely in reporting the odd Morning Star financial trouble.
Last month a judicious commenter that is instinctively paying attention stated the following.
“Years ago Morning Star was not funded by the City, but by a non-profit the Spirit of Aurora. I’m not sure if the City ever had a budget for Morning Star. I think there is more to this than the article makes out.
I agree there are some awkward questions that remain to be answered before any more tax money gets spent. However, some on council feel spend now, ask questions later.