Veterans, Seniors Assail Agency Changes : County services: The point of contention is a budget-cutting report given supervisors that proposes eliminating the community services office.

Veterans and elderly citizens throughout the county spoke out Thursday against a proposed reorganization of county agencies, claiming that the budget-cutting plan would bury their programs in the bowels of county bureaucracy and ultimately diminish services now available to them.

According to a report to be presented to the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday, the financially strapped county could save $195,000 annually by eliminating the relatively small Community Services Agency and shifting its duties to larger county divisions, such as the Social Services Agency.

The report acknowledges that the county created the Community Services Agency in 1979 to oversee a small number of programs, such as the Veterans Services Office and the Area Agency on Aging, after concluding that such groups would be better served by a small, independent agency.

But last summer, the board ordered county planners to consider disbanding the CSA as a means of streamlining services and cutting costs. The county faced a $46-million shortfall last summer and next year’s outlook is even bleaker.

“I think we’re going to be buried so deep in lower levels of management that we will have no visibility,” said John Kumbera, 69, a Brea widower and chairman of the Area Agency on Aging.

“In order to see the supervisors, we’ll have to go to four or five levels above us just to get permission,” Kumbera continued. “What a lot of seniors are saying is that this means that we’re no longer very important in Orange County.”

The Area Agency on Aging provides services available to all county residents over 60. The agency makes about 20,000 referrals a year for seniors seeking medical, legal or other help. It also testifies before the board on issues affecting the elderly and reviews and comments on scores of bills introduced at the state and federal level, Executive Director Peggy Weatherspoon said.

In addition the agency, administers $7 million in federal funds, most of which is contracted out to providers of a wide range of services for the elderly.

“I just don’t see any benefits (in the reorganization),” Weatherspoon said. “We are very efficient. . . . We served 1 million meals at 61 sites last year.”

The proposed reorganization plan has already drawn fire from women activists around the state because it calls for the elimination of the Commission on the Status of Women, created 15 years ago to monitor issues ranging from child care to spouse abuse.

A summary of the report presented to supervisors’ aides earlier this week suggested that the reorganization would save about $122,000 by disbanding the women’s commission and $73,000 by reductions in personnel.

In addition to those cost savings, the report says the county could claim an additional $150,000 to $230,000 in federal and state funds by shifting some the agency’s programs into the county’s Social Services Agency.

Veterans protesting the the reorganization Thursday said that it would create the stigma that the services they receive are welfare, rather than benefits earned. Some also expressed the fear that as part of the Social Services Agency, the veteran’s office would lose out to other programs that the county is required to provide under state or federal law. The veterans office is not a so-called mandated program.

“If we’re under the welfare program and it comes to a crunch about money, who’s going to lose?” asked Major Anderson, 75, a retired Marine officer who served in World War II and the Korean War. Anderson is now chairman of the Orange County Veterans Advisory Council. “We need someone in there fighting for us,” Anderson continued. “We’ve lost damn near everything. I can’t even get buried anymore.”