The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Residents want to stay at Rose Haven
Facility will close once the last resident is relocated
LITCHFIED — Many of the residents at Rose Haven, a rest home and skilled nursing facility at 33 North St., do not want to move out of the residence despite the eminent closure of the facility by the owners, Apple Health Care Inc. of Avon.
“To be honest, I want to stay here,” said a resident who asked not to be named. I love it here, my church is here and my family is five minutes away.”
State law requires the operators of nursing home facilities to file a certificate of need with the Department of Social Services, Division of Health Care, before they are allowed to close a facility.
The state can deny the ability of an owner to close a facility if it finds it is not in the public’s best interest, state documents show.
Rose Haven filed the certificate of need on Jan. 9 citing “low census and financial viability issues” said department spokesman David Dearborn.
The census, or the total number of residents, showed there were 10 residents who lived in the nursing home area of the facility, for a 40 percent occupancy rate. Another 10 residents live in the residential care home, which reflected a 66 percent occupancy rate, Dearborn noted.
The request to close the home was approved by the state on Feb. 14 following a public hearing on Feb. 1.
The closure request document shows that Rose Haven LTD, “is currently operating at 57 percent occupancy” and “had losses from 2016 and 2017 totaling approximately $726,000.”
In addition, the document notes that the company had an “estimated loss of $110,000 in 2018.”
“This has been the longtime home for some for ten years,” the resident said. “We are like family, we’ve become close because a lot don’t have families and we depend on each other.”
“Everyone is very upset. There are people here from 70 to 85 years old,” he said.
Some of the residents are looking for another
Appropriations Committee cochairwoman Sen. Catherine Osten, D-Columbia, has any say about it.
“It’s not enough from my perspective, but it has to stay in,” Osten said Thursday. “We’re getting almost to a crisis situation in the number of troopers we have on the road. I’ve been worried about this since last year.”
The Appropriations Committee will hold public hearings and discuss with legislators before presenting its own budget. Osten contends if the money Lamont proposed for trooper training doesn’t stay intact, the state could face a law enforcement crisis.
“We need this just to keep the number of troopers at the current level,” she said.
State troopers have retired at a rate of 60 to 80 per year, creating a staffing shortage that could lead to only 800 sworn personnel by 2023. That’s when 55 percent of the force would be eligible to retire if no one else is hired, Rovella said in a letter sent with the report to the state’s Public Safety and Protection and Appropriations Committee co-chairs on Jan. 31.
The state police have 1,201 allocated positions — but 236 are not funded. If the state doesn’t move quickly to provide some funding, he said the numbers paint a “dire picture” for years to come.
The shortage is not only affecting road operations, but also specialized units, Rovella said. He hasn’t pulled people from the specialized units because “I can see they are all already depleted,” he said.
But the reduced ranks are leaving shortages in the number of people dealing with cybercrimes, violent crimes, drug task forces, human trafficking and other statutory functions, the report said.
More than 5,000 sex offender registry violations involving more than 2,000 offenders are waiting to be processed, and the Deadly Weapon Offender Registry has 780
open cases that require investigative reports, the staffing study concluded. The registry tracks offenders who have been convicted of crimes with deadly weapons or who have been found not guilty by reason of insanity of a crime involving a deadly weapon.
There’s a 13,766 backlog in processing background checks with the state police Bureau of Identification and Records Unit, causing up to a three-month delay for people waiting for clearance for jobs, and a backlog of 529 Freedom of Information requests, which at one point translated into a two-year wait for the public to receive documents or information.
Rovella has reduced the backlog of nearly 18,000 firearm sale transaction paperwork that had not been entered into the system by the Special Licensing and Firearms Unit. There is also a 17-month wait for reports and records requested by the public, the report said.
There’s also a shortage in civilian staff, which ordinarily would be used to backfill some of the tasks that troopers perform, Rovella said.
The Division of Scientific Services, which falls under DESPP and includes the state crime lab, has a backlog of 3,197 case requests for DNA, many of which involve violent crimes. That backlog is related to a 5 percent increase in submissions and the inability to address staffing shortages due to budget constraints, according to the report.
The backlog doesn’t take into account the “inventory” of coldcase evidence that must be retested as DNA techniques improve, Rovella said. He’s hoping to hire some “critical” employees at the lab to reduce the backlog this year.
The lab was previously backlogged in 2011, causing the agency to temporarily lose national accreditation.
He’s otherwise had to make some tough choices to fund DESPP positions.
“I wasn’t happy about giving up $1 million for cars, but I would be less happy about giving up $1 million for personnel,” he said. “I had to maintain staffing levels.”
Staffing at each of the 11 state police troops is down by at least 12 percent, with Troop E in Montville down by 24 percent. Troop H in Hartford is down by 22 percent and Troop B in North Canaan is down 27 percent, the report said.
There has been a 16 percent reduction in staff for the major crime units, which investigate serious crimes within towns whose only law enforcement are state troopers, a variety of other serious crimes at the request of municipal authorities, and all fatal policeinvolved shootings.
To maintain coverage on the roads, troopers made $16.5 million in overtime in 2018 — about $5 million more than in 2017 — to cover some of the shortages, the report said.
State police had 1,074 sworn troopers in January 2017, Rovella said in the letter to committee chairs. By January 2019, the number was down 14 percent with an average of 60 out sick, injured or out for other reasons, including disciplinary actions, Rovella said.
With another 29 troopers expected to retire by July, the current class of 45 recruits, who won’t the hit the road on their own for at least another five months, will barely cover the existing shortfall, Osten said.
The current list of 83 candidates expired on Dec. 31, but can be extended, Osten said. She agreed that some of the candidates likely took other positions or have moved out of state while waiting for the list to move to the next phases of hiring, including background checks, polygraphs and psychological testing.
“We’re tipping on the level of unmanageable,” Osten said “We need to move this forward. All that (the $1.25 million) does is keep us from going into crisis mode. I would not be willing to take that out.”