City Starts to Pare Programs for Seniors : Services: Reductions in food and household aid are initial responses to budget crisis that could cost local agencies $750,000 per year.

This Christmas season, a few elderly San Fernando Valley residents were denied hot meals. Others got phone calls from social workers telling them they would no longer get visits from house cleaners.

In fact, all over the city, programs for the elderly were scaled back this month in anticipation of federal funding cuts. Once Congress resolves the stalemate over the new budget, city officials expect that as much as $750,000 per year in new cuts could be passed along to local social service groups that provide older people with food, social activities and household help.

The proposed cuts would be a small portion of the $20 million the city spends annually on such services. But certain programs could be hit hard. For example, programs aimed at preventing elder abuse and monitoring nursing homes may be eliminated, said Ann D. Smith, general manager of the city’s Department of Aging.

In a last-ditch effort to maintain programs at current levels, City Council members Laura Chick and Rita Walters have asked city department heads to comb their accounts for leftover funds that might be shifted to the Department of Aging.

In the meantime, local agencies are hoping to delay the full impact of the expected cuts by making a series of budget trims over time.

The strategy didn’t make for a pleasant holiday for those charged with carrying it out: Marilyn Fried, executive director of the Van Nuys-based Organization for the Needs of the Elderly, spent the days before Christmas sending people home from senior centers with empty stomachs.

The budget is being “balanced on the backs of the people who can least afford it,” she said. “These are the people who are the most fragile.”

ONE is among at least 16 agencies citywide that operate senior centers and provide services such as home-delivered meals, transportation and health care. These operate under contract with the city, which receives a large chunk of funding from the federal government.

This is the money slated for cuts. Further complicating matters were the two recent federal government shutdowns, which created cash-flow problems for local agencies, said Tony De Clue, assistant general manager of the Aging Department.

Due to the shutdowns, the department recently resorted to writing checks against a $2.1-million emergency loan from the city’s General Fund. The loan was floated last June to keep programs running through the fits and starts of the federal government, De Clue said.

In view of these hardships, Fried said ONE cut programs that depend on federal funds by about 15%, starting in early December.

So far, that’s meant disappointment only for a few of the hundreds of people who receive services through ONE each day.

For example, three seniors were cut from the house-cleaning program. Twenty-five seniors who had eaten every weekday at the Guadalupe Center in Canoga Park have had their meals cut back to four days a week.

And a handful of others have been turned away daily from each of the agency’s six hot-lunch sites, or were told they must put their names on waiting lists to get home-delivered meals.

The hot lunches at ONE’s kitchens are first-come, first-served. And it wasn’t uncommon before the budget reductions for seniors who arrived late to be turned away. But the problem is worse now, said Fried.

Such belt-tightening, plus the emergency loan, should make it possible for senior services to run at current levels until February, Smith said. After that, more severe cuts are likely--unless the city provides a last-minute injection of funds at the behest of council members Chick and Walters.

Money from other sources is needed, said Karen R. Constine, chief of staff for Chick, because “we want to make sure we can continue the level of service we are delivering today.”

Alternate funding for senior services will be considered by the City Council’s Arts, Health and Humanities Committee in early January, Constine said.