Because the county budget season is here and we’re entering the fifth year of controversy over restructuring the Adult Care Center (ACC), it’s time to take stock.

By objective measure, placing Infinite Care in charge of ACC operations hasn’t delivered, particularly for seniors subjected to repeat deficiencies reported from the NYS Department of Health (DOH) September ACC survey. 

Responsible adults don’t turn away from a status quo that isn’t working.

Aiding that status quo is the myth that Infinite Care has been running the ACC better than the county had, and that the county remains too financially strapped to do so again. But that mythology is refuted by observable fact, not only from the DOH survey and from Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services historical ratings, but also from NYS Comptroller (OSC) annual fiscal stress testing, which indicates the county has scored for years and continues to score exceptionally well. 

Credit whomever or whatever you wish for our healthy fiscal stress standing, but the money is there for the county to operate the ACC without undue burden on taxpayers—don’t forget also the millions in reconciliation arrears Infinite Care remains to the county. 

Which brings us to this: recent reporting on the county manager’s proposed budget and projected 9 percent tax increase, absent the county fully relinquishing ACC operations, is essentially the same tale trotted out each year since 2020. 

Yet what we also know is this: Year over year the county auditor gives voice not only to operational challenges confronting the ACC, but also to an auditing standard applied to no county department except the ACC—a standard, he’s noted, making it appear more fiscally challenged than it otherwise would. 

If county legislators are serious about including seniors in their stated interest to do right by “all” residents, then they need to address the long-standing absence of a qualified full-time county-employed ACC administrator that I’m told regulations require. They also need to cease the tax-increase scare tactic at the expense of vulnerable seniors, and begin auditing the ACC like any other valuable service the county provides. 

Mostly, they need the will and initiative to act.

Dave Colavito
Rock Hill, NY