Plans for CVTC’s $43M on a roller-coaster ride

Plans for $43 million in improvements to the Central Virginia Training Center are on a roller-coaster ride, the president of a group representing parents said Friday.

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine’s proposal Wednesday to switch $18.5 million of the funds into community housing for many of the center’s 460 residents was criticized by several parents and local officials.

Kaine’s plan changed what had been a debate at the center over how to make the improvements into one about just hanging onto all of the $43 million.

The debate will move to the General Assembly in January when legislators take up Kaine’s proposed budget revisions for the coming fiscal year.

Charles Fallis, president of Families and Friends United for CVTC, told about 65 people in the meeting that the high point of the year came in April, when the General Assembly surprisingly included $43 million for upgrading the center in a statewide bond package.

The low point came this fall, Fallis said, when an alliance of four mental-health advocacy groups based in other parts of the state “took an exceedingly envious interest in the $43 million that had been appropriated for this facility.”

Legislators designated the money for safety-code upgrades including sprinklers, alarms, generators and elevators, along with other modernizations.

The “Virginia Alliance for Community” said the money should be used to move all CVTC residents to about 100 homes where just three or four of them would live together.

Jamie Trosclair, speaking for the alliance, said in response Friday that, “Our proposal is, and always has been, asking for all $43 million in capital funds to be used for the men and women who live in the Central Virginia Training Center.

“It is about creating community-based housing for the current residents of CVTC — housing that would be operated by CVTC and staffed by CVTC employees,” Trosclair said.

Trosclair is executive director of the Arc of Virginia, a mental-health advocacy group in Richmond. The Arc is a member of the alliance, along with three other groups that support community-based homes instead of institutions.

Two state legislators, the Amherst County administrator, and several parents argued that all the money should remain with the center.

Of the center’s 460 residents, 58 are on a waiting list to be transferred to community homes, said Denise Micheletti, its director.

Parents and advocates for the other residents mostly say the center is the best and safest home for them, and some of the parents say their family members couldn’t survive anywhere else.

“It’s been a roller-coaster year,” Fallis said, comparing it to the opening lines of Dickens’ ‘A Tale of Two Cities’: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times … ”

Rodney Taylor, the county administrator, told the meeting that some of the safety issues at CVTC “wouldn’t be tolerated on any college campus in Virginia and it shouldn’t be tolerated here.”

Despite the safety concerns, the level of care residents receive is top-notch, several of the residents’ parents said.

Micheletti told the meeting that the federal government’s Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services recently gave CVTC its top five-star rating in a review of every nursing home that receives Medicare and Medicaid funds.

Only two other facilities, among nine nursing homes in or near Lynchburg, received the five-star rating. Information can be found at http://www.medicare.gov/NHCompare/

Letters from Del. Ben Cline, R-Rockbridge County, and Sen. Steve Newman, R-Lynchburg, were read at the meeting. Both legislators promised to work on keeping the entire $43 million for use on the CVTC campus.

Del. Shannon Valentine, D-Lynchburg, told the crowd that no matter how the funds were used, they would benefit residents of CVTC. “Every penny is for the residents,” she said, to applause.

Valentine also said, “I’m not sure there is flexibility” within the funds’ legislative mandate to switch any of the money to community homes.

Dr. James Reinhard, commissioner of the state Department of Mental Health, Mental Retardation and Substance Abuse Services, said after the meeting that the significant decisions about the money will have to wait for the legislative debate to conclude, probably in February.

Reinhard assured the parents that no one in his office was making any decisions about how to proceed with CVTC, but “I’m proud of this facility” and “there is no plan to close CVTC” — something Kaine proposed for two institutions in other cities.

Wriley Wood of Charlottesville, one of the parents, told Reinhard he thought the commissioner had a goal of reducing CVTC’s resident population to 300 residents.

Reinhard said more use of community homes is a trend, but CVTC is needed for critical-care residents and as a health care center for residents who have moved to group homes. Reinhard didn’t confirm having any goals for changing the center’s capacity.