Gilroy
– Thousands of South County families will lose grocery staples
if a Gilroy program is axed this spring – but the cash-strapped
county says it has little choice.
Gilroy – Thousands of South County families will lose grocery staples if a Gilroy program is axed this spring – but the cash-strapped county says it has little choice.
Faced with a $19.5 million reduction target, county public health officials have proposed cutting Gilroy’s Women, Infants and Children office, which serves more than 3,000 low-income families each year. WIC vouchers keep their cupboards stocked with nutritious milk, eggs and costly formula; WIC counselors teach them how to rear thriving kids. For Gilroy mothers such as Mary Reis, losing WIC is almost unthinkable.
“Where else can we go?” asked Reis, a mother of three. Her children gulp down a gallon of milk every day – a healthy habit that’s good for their bones, and bad for her budget. “You can’t get these things at the dollar store.”
Gilroy’s WIC office is just one could-be casualty of the sweeping cuts, aimed at slimming the county’s $238 million deficit. If the proposed cuts pass, South County’s regional Public Health office and the San Martin Pediatric Immunization Clinic will close. Gilroy schools will lose all but one of their SchoolLink counselors, who address drugs, alcohol and emotional issues, said district nurse Eileen Obata. The cuts would also end PeaceBuilders, a violence prevention effort at Las Animas Elementary School, and contract out the Adolescent Family Life Program, which provides two social workers to South County students.
“We don’t have a lot of choice here,” said county supervisor Don Gage. “We can’t manufacture money.”
How the cuts will affect South County remains unclear. County staff are still fleshing out the proposal’s countywide impact, said Roland Velasco, policy aide to supervisor Gage.
“At this point, you have the same information that I have,” said Velasco.
The proposal is available on the county’s Web site, but significant details are unclear. For instance, the budget notes that WIC services will be reduced countywide, but does not specify that Gilroy’s WIC office might close. As news of the exact cuts filters down to social service agencies, uncertainty and fear abounds.
Asked how Gilroy schools would replace SchoolLink counselors, Obata sighed.
“We haven’t even gotten that far,” she said. “We need something. We just can’t have nothing in place for our students.”
San Jose office too far for many families
If Gilroy’s WIC office closes, Sam Abed’s store will, too.
Monday morning, Abed unloaded hundreds of cartons of milk into a wall of refrigerators. Since 2003, his store, Women in Care Nutrition, has exchanged WIC vouchers for healthy necessities such as apple juice, beans, peanut butter and cheese; by sunset, the refrigerators are nearly empty, he said. His store primarily serves WIC participants, who pick up their vouchers from the WIC office a few doors down from his First Street shop.
“It would be disastrous for these people,” said Abed. “The closest office will be in San Jose – and who will go there?”
Many low-income families lack cars, or have only one car to ferry parents to work, Abed added. Reis can’t spare a 90-minute bus ride, she said – especially with three kids in tow. That means if Gilroy WIC disappears, milk money will come out of her pocket.
“That’s money that I just can’t afford,” Reis said.
By closing the Gilroy office, the county will save roughly $1 million each year, said Amy Carta, a senior health care program manager for the county. Still, no one is pleased – not even those balancing the budget. The cuts pain Evelyn Caceres-Chu, a Nutrition and Wellness program manager who oversees WIC countywide.
“Those families count on the food that WIC provides them,” she said with a sigh. “Making these kind of decisions – it’s really hard.”
Cutting services is especially frustrating because WIC has expanded its caseloads nearly 30 percent in the past five years, said Bonnie Broderick, program manager of the department’s Nutrition and Wellness section. Today, WIC serves more than 17,000 clients each month, countywide. This year, the state will award an additional $46,773 to the program – a silver lining on an otherwise cloudy WIC budget.
“To reverse that trend, and deny services to the eligible – it hits us,” said Broderick.
County budget not yet set in stone
Health activists are fighting the proposed cuts. Lillian Castillo and fellow members of South County Collaborative’s Nutrition and Health Committee have fired off e-mails to county supervisors Blanca Alvarado and Liz Kniss, who sit on the county Health and Hospitals Committee, and to supervisor Don Gage, who represents South County.
“No one else provides these services,” said Castillo, co-chair of the committee. “My reaction was, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me.’ How can this happen?”
County supervisors Blanca Alvarado and Liz Kniss will review the proposals Thursday at the Health and Hospitals committee meeting. Over the next month, supervisors will review the proposed cuts at the committee level, then make recommendations to county executive Pete Kutras to draw up a revised budget. Through a series of public meetings in May and June, the supervisors will gather input, then vote on Kutras’ budget June 15. As of now, nothing is set in stone, Alvarado cautioned.
“This is probably the most critical budget we’ve ever had,” she said. “We need as much community input as we can get.”
In light of the proposed cuts, substantive benefits for county employees are raising eyebrows. Some county employees get nearly half their salary in benefits, said Dina Campeau, chair of South County Collaborative. Gage said benefits and salaries will be scrutinized in meetings with county unions, such as Environmental Health employees, who recently accepted a 9 percent salary increase instead of 15 percent.
Other critics have asked why Gilroy’s WIC services couldn’t be reduced, instead of eliminated. Caceres-Chu said because the Gilroy office is leased, keeping it open part-time wouldn’t save the county enough money.
But snuffing WIC could have serious consequences – and long-term costs – for the entire county, said Sister Rachela Silvestri, community health coordinator for Saint Louise Regional Hospital. Child obesity is already a problem in Gilroy, where nearly a third of children are overweight. Without WIC, poor parents are more likely to fill kids’ plates with cheap, fatty foods, leading to obesity and malnutrition. Anemia, now at a low in Santa Clara County, may resurge; babies may be born smaller, and suffer medical complications for life, said Castillo.
WIC counselors also link parents to health care and social services, preventing serious issues from cropping up later. At the WIC office, consultant Davin teaches women to breast feed, and guides them through pre-natal worries and post-partum depression. Nearly two-thirds of her clients are monolingual Spanish-speakers.
For every dollar spent on WIC, argued Castillo, more than three dollars are saved on federal, state, local and private health care costs.
“I just don’t see how we can eliminate it,” said Alvarado. “It’s too important. We have to find solutions that aren’t apparent today.”
Hopefully, those solutions will emerge as supervisors pore over the department’s proposal, she added: “It’s not over ’til it’s over.”
But the news has already rattled Abed’s customers. Antonio Guerrero, a father of five, sobered upon hearing Monday that the Gilroy office might close. His son, 4-year-old Anthony, clambered around his leg as he spoke, his arms laden with cereal boxes and eggs.
“No es justo,” he said: It’s not right.
