THE DAILY LEVEL # 14

Monday, September 14, 1998

A CHANGE OF COURSE

(Transcription of the speech by Governor Ausband to the residents of Sailors' Snug Harbor. Monday, August 10, 1998, Sea Level, N.C.)

...let me say a couple of things right up front...first of all, we've not been sold..I've heard in the last two or three weeks that we've been sold to a Japanese conglomerate....not true...I've heard that we've been sold to a Jewish group...not true...I heard last week we were sold to Disneyworld, that's my favorite one...it's not true either...we have not been sold at all...I want to make a few comments this morning, and I'm gonna work kind of off of a script...what I'm gonna tell you is a little complicated...there are a number of factors and nuances and reasons why we're trying to do what we're doing...you, of all people, are entitled and need to know...after I finished these comments, I'll answer any question that you'll have to the best of my ability..............forty years ago, there were nearly five-hundred residents at Sailors' Snug Harbor...thirty years ago, there were four-hundred...even when the move was made in nineteen seventy-six, there were over a hundred and ten...today we have a census of eighty-two mariners, even though our eligible population for admissions is the highest it has been in the history of our existence...there are more seamen eligible for admission today, than in any times since we were chartered in eighteen-oh-six...so, twenty-thousand fivehundred seamen are eligible for admission...you are factor one of eighty two, you reside here...I don't think that our desirability as a retirement facility has diminished...in fact, I think we offer more amenities today, than in any time of the past, or services on site, transportation...I don't think it's our location, as we have very few mariners who come, stay a short period of time, and then leave...in fact, I hear most of you say, you really enjoy the tranquil and rather safe environment that we have...crime is not a concern, we have a good local homegrown staff, and I think our location has in fact been one of our blessings...after a number of years of study and thought and observation, I believe that the foremost reason that we're caring for a fraction of one percent of the mariners who are eligible for assistence, is because of changes in the way our maritime industry and our maritime industry retirees are living...approximately two thirds of all retired seamen today are married...of the remaining one third, a high percentage have been married, have children, nieces, nephews, other family connnections...for obvious reasons, retired seamen have no more inclination to move away from their loved ones than any other segment of the population ...since the Second World War, the maritime industry seamen have sailed in a different fashion...many of them had the opportunity to purchase homes...they become integrated into, so to speak, the main stream of society...they've joined civic clubs, churches, they have property, friends and neighbours...well, these ties, these connections, they certainly are a connection to the community...when we opened in eighteen-thirty three, the Sailors' Snug Harbor was the sole means of assistence for seamen to get help...the seamen needed a place to live, didn't have money enough to eat on, needed medical help...there was only one place to go, and that was Sailors' Snug Harbor...today there are retirement communities, retirement homes and nursing homes in every county of the United States...there are senior citizen retirement facilities, there are community assistance programs available...there are even electronic devices that one can wear around his or her neck or wrist: push a button and you got help...there's medicare...so, the demand for seamen to come to one central location ceases to exist...when Captain Randall drew his will, absolutely no one could have envisioned the changes that have occured in the ensuing two-hundred years....there are many retired seamen living in the conditions that I've just described ...married people, people with other family connections, people with civic ties, or people living and enjoying their participating in other means of assistence, who have marginal incomes...some frankly have inadequate incomes to enjoy a comfortable retirement...I don't think anyone here would argue that these people would live a better life if they came to Snug harbor...the Trustees did not want to ask these people to abandon their families and to leave everything that they worked for, just like any other retiree...they thought that that was not what Randall envisioned ....in October nineteen ninety-two, I announced a pilot project to provide out-reach assistence to seamen in need...this would be financial help for seamen who are eligible for admission but who, for compelling reasons, could not move to the Sailors' Snug Harbor...the pilot project was a huge success...the people who participated in it, recorded that they were going from a situation where many of them had not enough money to pay the light bill, not enough money to pay the rent, couldn't afford prescription drugs, to the point where they'd have two or three-hundred dollars left over in their pockets at the end of the month....they could continue residing where they wanted to live...the Trustees, obviously pleased at the results of the program, have petitioned the Court in the State of New York for permission to make that program part of what we do to take care of retired seamen...after a period of a little better than a year from the time that that petition was filed, the Court approved the petition...now, this decision opens the door for the Trustees to further improve the community outreach alternatives programme...simply put, if an eligible seaman files an application for assistence, it will be reviewed...often a social worker will review the home situation, a recommendation is formulated to the Trustees, who will approve or disapprove a stipend...the stipends are paid directly to service providers, or vendors of services...in other words, we write checks each month to landlords, insurance companies, utility companies ...we've even had one situation where we established a charge account on which we paid monthly to a grocery store...so, there can be quite a number of ways to go that sole desire...the intent is to see to it, that a seaman who doesn't have enough money to live comfortably, can live comfortable...this decision means that over the next years, over the next hundred and sixty-five years, many more thousand seamen can be helped...it's not inconceivable that with this approach we can have several hundred seamen at one time receiving benefits...and I hope, because of your relationship to the Harbor, and your relationship and thoughts about Captain Randall, that you share my excitement about this opportunity to provide help...for I know, beyond a shadow of doubt, the reason you're here this morning at nine o'clock on a Monday, is to find out what this means to me.....as retired seamen continue to learn about the outreach program, the applications for admission will continue to decline...we'll have fewer applications with each passing year, that's been happening for quite some time...however, the cost of providing care at the Harbor is not insignificant as you might imagine...the Trustees do not want and will not cut back on services....so another method of maintaining the level of service had to be found..the Trustees simply didn't want to be faced with the prospect of saying, 'It's too expensive to care for thirty or forty seamen', and not be able to carry on the work...because, in the absence of some alternative, that's assuredly what will happen....as a result, the trustees are seeking another individual, cooperation, person, a not-for-profit group, with whom they can work to purchase the facility, who will provide the care at the same level, same situation that it is now, but will use their resources to fill our forty empty beds...by filling our nearly one third empty beds the additional revenue can help offset the cost of providing care for the diminishing number of mariners we have here...we can not, by law, admit non seamen to this facility, we can't care for anybody, except retired merchant seamen....so, that's not an option we have available to us...I believe that high quality retirement services like this are in demand and in fact will probably be more in demand in the future...it's not inconceivable that expansion could take place here...I think that, instead of becoming a smaller facility, the opposite will occur...we'll see more going on here, we'll see more people living here...we'll see more activities and more amenities provided here...the new owner, as I said, could be a cooperation, an individual or a not-for-profit group...however, it will be somebody who is wealthy enough to be able to afford the operation, and somebody experienced enough at this level of operation to know what they're doing...anybody who seeks to purchase the facility will be required to furnish references, the state licenses your organisations...in the states where they operate will be confidentially enquired of, and visits will be made to the facilities they operate ...because the Trustees are very concerned that the level of care remains the same, a contract will be drawn between the two parties...the contract will basically state that the level of staffing will not change, the level of activities will not change, the transportation will remain in place, that mariners will always have priority for admission and the happy hour won't go away...now, most contracts are quite contestable, any contract is contestable ...but gentlemen and ladies, the Trust will be paying the bills for you to remain here, that means that each month the cost of your remaining here won't change, you will not be priced out of the market...you will stay here as long as you choose to stay here...and the Trust will write the check to subsidize the rest of the costs, and when you write a check that amounts to that kind of money, you have a great deal of leverage over what goes on...so, I'm pretty comfortable with the fact that the level of care will not change...goes without saying, but I'll say it anyhow, any seaman who wants to make an application for the outreach program to reside anywhere else is free to do so...I just wrote a vision statement for the Trustees that spreads out over the next fifteen to twenty years...I did it with intervals...three years, five years, eight, twelve and fifteen years...and oh, I said in there, as long as we can find a way to maintain this operation...as long as we got enough paying customers to be here, that there'll be seamen here for many, many years...twenty years from now, there may not be twenty-five seamen here...but I believe there'll continue to be seamen here...in short, we've not been sold...we're looking for an opportunity to do business with somebody else, and make that happen...the reason however is to make sure you can stay here, and that the hundred or so employees that we have working here, can keep their jobs...I will never sell you out...our new mission will be to subsidize care in the same fashion...there will be subsidizing care for you, and it could be here, it could be in Fort Lauderdale, in Boston, in Seattle, anywhere..but the commitment to you has not changed...I understand your anxiety, I really do, because I've been wrestling with this for a long time, a lot of years, believing that the day would come when we were gonna have to alter course...because what we had can not continue indefinitly...I'm sorry it can't...it's been a wonderful trip...but if we keep doing what we're doing today, not only are you going to be homeless, but Sailors' Snug Harbor's going to be out of business, 'cause we'll have no way to take care of seamen....

(Patrick Ausband, Governor of Sailors Snug Harbor)