BY KATHY BARATTA
Staff Writer
As part of a plan that has been designed to cut costs in the 2005 Howell municipal budget, the township’s Youth and Family Coun-seling Services Department is scheduled to be eliminated as of July 1.
A strong show of union support for the department felled by the budgetary ax was expected to have been present at Tuesday night’s Township Council meeting.
In addition to employees from the township’s Transport Workers Union, a contingent of Howell police officers from PBA Local 228 was also expected to join in showing support to 19 full-time municipal employees who were told last week that their jobs will not exist come July. Some of the employees being let go have been in their jobs for more than 20 years.
The total salary costs for all the eliminated full-time positions equals $775,370, not including other health and employee benefits.
Also eliminated were six vacant part-time positions, and the welfare department, which consisted of one position.
Howell Mayor Joseph DiBella and the council said in a press release that the cuts were being made in order to “streamline government, find efficiencies in processes and reduce the size and cost of local government … to eliminate services that may be available through another government entity.”
According to DiBella, the function of the Youth and Family Counseling Services Department duplicates what is available from Monmouth County.
That position is not correct, according to Lynn Miller, the director of the Monmouth County Department of Human Services. Miller said the mayor and council are incorrect when they refer to Howell’s Youth and Family Counseling Services Department as a duplicate agency whose services are also provided by the county.
“I’m not sure where they got that impression,” said Miller, who noted the county has two large contracts with Howell.
According to Miller, the county only provides funding, not actual counseling services.
In 2004, the Howell Youth and Family Counseling Ser-vices Department received $74,669 from the county and state, according to Holli Toline, the department’s director.
Toline said she was shocked and surprised when she was informed by Township Manager Bruce Davis earlier this month that her department was being eliminated.
“For 21 years, through every administration, Republican and Democrat, we have been the source for this township,” she said, adding that at present her department is seeing to the needs of 250 active clients, not counting clients who come and go as their treatment evolves.
According to Toline, statistics show Howell to be third in Monmouth County for child abuse reports and fourth in the county for drug abuse admissions.
According to Miller, there are only five towns in Mon-mouth County that still offer the types of services available at the Howell Youth and Family Counseling Services Depart-ment.
Toline said she hopes the mayor and council members will rethink their decision to eliminate the department.
Noting that her department has received accolades statewide, Toline said, “My only response is that I hope the mayor and council realize they made a mistake, be proud of this department and stand up for it as cutting edge.”
Miller said she understood that “municipalities have difficult budgetary decisions to make,” but she, too, bemoaned the decision.
“It’s a real loss,” she said. “Holli has done wonderful work for over 20 years.”
Toline has been the director of the department since it was formed more than 21 years ago. Her present annual salary is $70,397. The total payroll for her department, which consists of six treatment personnel and an administrative assistant, is $393,468.
Miller said she had been contacted by DiBella and asked to aid in the transition of client services from the municipal level to the county level.
The rest of the council’s intended budget cuts include six employees from parks, recreation and grounds and the public works departments. The total payroll for those positions at present totals $349,976.
A decision was also made by the council to eliminate certificates of occupancy for home resales. That decision will leave enforcement officer Patricia Hoover unemployed. Like Toline, Hoover has been employed by Howell for more than 20 years.
Police Chief Ronald Carter said he had not been consulted prior to the announced decision to eliminate the Youth and Family Counseling Services Department. Carter said the police consider Toline’s department to be a resource.
According to Carter, his officers rely on Toline’s treatment staff not only to help deal with youths and families in need, but also for their own personal needs.
“I have some serious concerns on how we’re going to deal with this. It is definitely going to put a burden on us,” the chief said.
Howell police Detective Eric Rice is the police department’s juvenile liaison officer with Howell schools. In a May 5 letter to his captain, two days after the cuts were announced, Rice said that he, too, is concerned about the negative impact that will result from eliminating Toline as a resource.
According to Rice, “the loss of these services will definitely impact on the ability of the juvenile unit to assist families and will certainly increase the workload of this unit.”
While noting that New Jersey, under former governor Christie Whitman, mandated community-based mental health and family health programs, Rice cited the myriad of services provided by Howell’s Youth and Family Counseling Services.
Rice also noted that the elimination of Toline’s department is being made at a time when the county is doing away with several adolescent-and-families-in-crisis programs it offers.
According to Miller, the county will not be picking up the provision of these services.
Rice also made a point of noting that it is not just families without insurance coverage who need the services provided by Toline’s department. According to Rice, even families with insurance that covers individual and family counseling may find they are only provided minimal coverage and not ongoing, necessary treatment.
Carter said he, Rice and other representatives of the police force would be meeting this week with Davis and members of the council to discuss the impending elimination of the Youth and Family Counseling Services Department.
Several members of the community who are clients or have family members who are clients of the department shared their thoughts as to what its elimination will mean to them.
William Forfar, 18, said the counseling he has received is “essential to my well-being.”
“It’s madness,” said the young man about the proposed elimination of the department, adding “without Dominic (his counselor), I’d be on drugs.”
Susan Nordyk is a single mother of three children who has relied on Toline’s services over the years.
“They are a godsend to me,” said Nordyk, who does not have health insurance coverage and presently has one of her daughters engaged in art therapy with Toline’s department.
Nordyk, a resident of Howell for more than 20 years, said the cut of Toline’s department will create hardships for Howell families like hers.
“At a time when there are still so many people without health insurance and these professional counseling services are offered to township residents free of charge, I find it outrageous that the narrow-minded Township Council would dispense of this important service,” Nordyk said.
The council’s press release states that making the cuts was not easily done. However, the council members state that “with diminishing state aid and taxpayers being overwhelmed with higher taxes at every turn, we had no choice but to cut spending and reduce the work force in an effort to stave off a more sizable tax increase.”
The council members went on to state that their work is “not yet done as it relates to finding further efficiencies and costs savings” and that “departmental audits will be being made in an effort to review if additional efficiencies and savings can be achieved.”
Christopher Mikkelson, president of the TWU, said the decision by the mayor and council to cut the department without seeking input from either the police department or the union was a “prime example of bad employer-employee relations.”
In noting that without the layoffs the municipal tax rate would have increased by 6.5 cents per $100 of assessed valuation, Mikkelson asked if the coming 5-cent increase will be worth people losing their jobs.
Mikkelson said DiBella and the council members should have reached out to the union in an effort to come to some creative solutions like job furloughs rather than just eliminating jobs altogether.