S.J. center for disabled adults may shut doors

STOCKTON— On a typical morning, Don and Karen Woxberg begin the process of preparing son Sean for the day ahead at the program he has faithfully attended for nearly a quarter of a century.

It’s comforting for Sean’s elderly parents to know he has a place to go during the day. And it gives Sean, 46, the opportunity to step out into a life of his own beyond the walls of the Woxbergs’ east Stockton residence.

“Never once has he ever refused to go,” 77-year-old Don Woxberg said earlier this week. “It’s where he wants to go because that’s where all his friends are.”

Sean was born with tuberous sclerosis, a genetic condition, and has a dual diagnosis of autism. He also suffers from seizures, and he is completely nonverbal.

Her son “wouldn’t have friends and would be locked up in the house” without his program at the San Joaquin Activity Center, said Karen Woxberg, 71.

But there is a very good chance Sean will be without the Activity Center in a matter of months. The Activity Center — established 57 years ago by parents and advocates for the developmentally disabled — may shut its doors for the final time on June 30.

Funding, not surprisingly, is the key issue.

Valley Mountain Regional Center, which serves children and adults with developmental disabilities in San Joaquin County, is the primary funding source for the Activity Center, which operates out of a building at the County Fairgrounds.

San Joaquin County, which has a general-fund budget of nearly $886 million, pays the portion not covered by VMRC, but its willingness to continue subsidizing the Activity Center has waned in recent years as the size of the subsidy has increased. According to the county, the $104,000 annual subsidy in 2007-08 increased to $422,000 by 2012-13 and is projected to reach $621,000 by the time this fiscal year ends in June.

“We understand that the clients and families who are served by the Activity Center are concerned and the County is doing everything we can to make sure the transition runs as smoothly as possible in the event of the closure,” Greg Diederich, the county’s director of health care services, wrote to The Record in an email.

VMRC is on track to spend $1.9 million this fiscal year to fund the Activity Center, according to figures provided by its executive director, Tony Anderson. VMRC’s cost was $1.4 million a decade ago and $1.6 million in 2016-17.

Part of the problem, Anderson said, is that while his agency provides the majority of the funding for the Activity Center, the program’s employees are paid at county rates.

“County workers get higher wages than all our other community service workers,” Anderson said. “It’s built into their structure. (The county) can’t pay less and we can’t pay the county more.”

Many of the Activity Center’s roughly 25 employees are distressed by the looming closure. Several spoke on the condition they remain anonymous because of their concern over the possibility of retribution.

“It’s unbelievable, so surreal,” one said. “We are a family there. The consumers, they’re our friends and we’re their friends. We’ve been a constant for them.”

But the likelihood that the Activity Center is in its final months has sent the most forceful shudder through the parents and the developmentally disabled young adults served by the program.