This cartoon makes light of an all too well known reality but it's not funny. It's a travesty and people need to wake up to what it going on. I certainly got a wake up call when I went into work on Friday.
I hear about all these budget cuts Governor John
Baldacci is laying down, I knew it was going to affect social services, but I didn't know exactly how.
This past Monday morning 20 people in children's services arrived at work and were told they no longer have jobs. One woman who worked there for five years lost her job while another person who had the same job and had been there only 5 months did not get let go.
An unknown number of other
peo
ple also were let go. One man who was a head supervisor in the adult housing program, who has worked there for 27 years and was three years away from retirement also arrived on Monday to find he no longer had a job.
Another man who has worked at the agency for 12 years and has worked his way up to a higher level position managing caseworkers was also without a job Monday morning. What is he supposed to tell his stay at home wife and three children who rely solely on him for income and health insurance? There is no where else that he can go and start out making as much as he was after 12 dedicated years. What are they going to do?
A job training program where people learned and practiced the skills they need to go out and gain employment in the workforce...Gone. Done. Cut.
So what's going on you ask? What's the bottom line? The bottom line is money. With the budget cuts that came down from
Baldacci,
CHCS had to cut 600,000 dollars from somewhere before the beginning of the next fiscal year or the entire agency would have to close it's doors. That's how bad it is folks. It was a decision between a comparative handful losing their jobs or thousands upon thousands upon thousands of people losing the services that they need in their lives.
So they cut the biggest dollar amounts higher up. It's easier to cut one manager who makes the biggest salary and just add to the workload of another manager who doesn't make quite as much than it is to cut a number of lower paid front line workers who work directly with the clients meeting their critical needs on a day to day basis. That's the only reason why I still have a job folks.
CHCS is one of the biggest social service agencies in the area. We are in four different counties and have been running since 1883. We do so much more than most people know. There is
foster care,
children's services,
children's residential programs and crisis prevention and intervention. There is adult mental health, substance abuse programs, psychiatry and counseling, job teaching and rehabilitation, residential homes and transitional home for adults, case management, adult crisis prevention and intervention. There are also services for cardiac rehabilitation, and the deaf and hearing
impaired and so, so, so much more.
All of these services were in danger of shutting down at the beginning of the fiscal year if 600,000 dollars wasn't cut from somewhere. All of these services would have been gone, all of these people out of jobs, all of these clients out of services and people
literally tossed out on the street. So some were
sacrificed to save the many. But that doesn't solve it. That doesn't mean everything is fine now. More cuts are to come and grant money is being pulled left and right because it's no longer there. And that doesn't make it any less tragic or devastating for those that lost their jobs on Monday.
I'd like to know how much
Baldacci's pay was cut or any of the other people that sit up there and rubber stamp these cuts through. I'd like to know how they sleep at night. I'd like to know what they are doing to balance the budget without cutting vital services! I'd like to know what
frivolous spending their doing away with. I'd like to know how much money is being wasted on needless items that are pork barrelled through in bill after bill while innocent, caring, decent
hardworking people are losing their jobs over a fraction of the amount of money that those stupid projects cost. I don't care if it seems impossible, there is another way and it needs to be found. FAST.
This was my kind of fishing! I am now on a work schedule that is good and bad. The great is that I work three days a week! Wahooo! The not so great it that I work a 10hr day, 14hr day and then 16hr day. So, Friday when I got home at 11:30 I was exhausted! Jason had invited three friends up to spend the night and fish the next day. They woke up at 5am. I yelled, "For the love of God it's too early!" and then rolled back over and slept until 9:30. I had a leisurely breakfast and then headed out at 10:00am with Erika, the other sane person that decided catching fish is not worth getting up at 5am for! When we reached the town of Enfield we telephoned the boys and they headed over to pick us up on the snowmobiles and give us a ride to the spot. Just the way I like it.
It was a gorgeous day! So warm and sunny that I didn't even need to be inside the shack. And then ten minutes after I arrived,thanks to my snowmobile chauffeur, a flag went up and I reeled in this shiny little Salmon (pictured below). It was like 18 inches or something. A little later there was another flag and Jason thought I was just stuck on bottom but I told him I knew what I was doing and kept on fighting the fishy and reeled in another Salmon almost identical to the first.
We ate some snacks, soaked up the sun, played with the puppy love and then packed up. Brian caught another togue when he was pulling up his trap and that made for a perfect end to day as he had just said, "Man, I really wish I'd get one more flag before we leave." The boys then Gave Erika and I a ride back to the car and we sauntered on home. Now that's my kind of ice fishing!
