Treatment center to close

After more than 40 years helping residents overcome problems with substance abuse, the Baldwin Council Against Drug Abuse, known as the Baldwin Community House, an unassuming facility at 950 Church St., has lost state funding and will have to shut down.

In a struggling economy, politicians use terms like “budget cuts” and “staff reductions” to gain advantages in the quest for elected positions, the media use them to add color and drama to dry financial forecasts and treasurers use them to leverage more money out of funding sources. But when the buck finally stops, real jobs are lost, real programs are closed and real communities are forced to go without. In the next few weeks, Baldwin will have another concrete example of these all-too-real consequences.

The unkindest cut

“As a part of the governor’s budget, he made cuts to the Office of Alcohol and Substance Abuse Services, OASAS, which is the agency that gives us our funding,” Claudia Rotundo, a 25-year employee of the Baldwin Community House, told the Herald. “He cut them close to $53 million. They had to cut from agencies all over the state. In some instances they canceled expansions; in some they killed off gambling addiction programs. Then they went to work on treatment facilities, and we were totally defunded. We’ll be funded through the end of the month, then we’ll have to close our doors. An agency that started in Baldwin in 1970 will cease to exist.”

Rotundo started at the Community House as a clerical worker, and was so inspired that she returned to school and earned a master’s degree in social work. Discussing the closure, she was clearly upset. She said that since she got the news, she has had trouble sleeping, and has wept at times. She and her staff have explored every available option to avoid closing their doors, but now recognize it as next to inevitable.