The aging Baby Boomer generation will bring unprecedented financial burdens to state and federal budgets – possibly breaking the bank – unless  the current levels of institutionalization are significantly reduced.

Nursing home reimbursements are costing the country hundreds of billions annually. The costs are so high that most people who are institutionalized, especially if they live for several years after confinement, eventually are forced to go on welfare.

Home care is the best option for large percentages of the elderly to stay off the welfare roles – Title IX – by which their institution’s bills are paid by the government. Currently, in Connecticut, that amounts to about $12,000 each month, per person, and that is virtually the tip of the iceberg.

Not everyone is capable of caring for an elderly relative at home home and not everyone should. But to make it easier for those who are considering such a move, the LA Times today ran an article that hits some of the highlights of preparing yourself, your home and your relative for what is certain to be a life-altering decision for everyone involved.

From the Los Angeles Times:

Stuff happens, so be prepared. If they have a personal emergency response system, your parents can call for help, 24/7, with only a push of a button. Newer systems can detect when a person has fallen down, so even if they’re too injured to push the button, the system will automatically alert an operator.

Being prepared can prevent stuff from happening. In the long run it’s important to create an environment where such a system is needed as rarely as possible, says Linda Ercoli, director of geriatric psychology at UCLA. “If you fall and break your hip, you might be able to push a button and get help, but the fact remains that you’ll have broken your hip.”

Your parents’ home may be booby-trapped with all sorts of falls waiting to happen — including slippery showers or tubs (add grab bars), slide-prone throw rugs (get rid of them or tape them down) and fate-tempting steps and stairs (consider installing ramps or even chairlifts). Poor lighting is another open invitation for your parents to take a tumble or bang their heads or stub their toes. With brighter, better-positioned lights, they can see what they’re doing and where they’re going.

Be an alarmist. Smoke and carbon monoxide alarms should be standard in every home. But your parents might also benefit from other, more specialized alarms, for example, an alarm that goes off if a pot has been left unattended on the stove for too long, or one that reminds them to take their medications (and alerts someone else if they don’t).

Life-simplifying devices. Clothing that fastens with Velcro — instead of buttons or zippers — can make a welcome difference for fingers stiff from arthritis. And for backs no longer terribly keen on bending, an extra-long shoehorn can be a real blessing.

Staying connected. Isolation can be a problem for seniors, especially as they become less mobile. If their hearing has also gone downhill, talking on the phone may be difficult. But a phone with amplified speakers can help, and if their eyes aren’t so sharp anymore, big buttons can help too. So can email with big fonts.

Senior centers and adult day care are other good options for those who can get to them — as are pets, at least in the right circumstances.

Food. Nutrition can be problematic for seniors. “Will they eat right — or even at all?” Perhaps your parents are eligible for Meals on Wheels services. Also, senior centers often offer no- or low-cost lunches. You might even hire someone to shop for groceries and prepare meals.

Professional services. Staying in their own home can be a lot easier for your parents if they don’t need to worry about keeping it clean or keeping the yard looking good. You can hire professionals to do those and almost any other chores your parents might no longer feel up to.

Taking care of business. Maybe it’s time for you to take charge of your parents’ finances — pay their bills, balance their checkbook. And it’s important for them to consult an elder law specialist. How they handle their assets can have big-bucks repercussions down the road, affecting their eligibility for programs like Medicaid, to name just one example.

Take care of yourself too. Worrying about and caring for your parents can wear you down. You can become isolated yourself and find yourself thinking, ‘I want my life back.’ Part of the challenge is the guilt you feel. That’s where caregiver support groups come in.

Resources. Countless agencies and organizations are dedicated to providing invaluable — but often free or low-cost — senior services. Information about many of these is available from your local Area Agency on Aging.

The Times did a good job of highlighting some of the ways to prepare for elder care. There are many more of course, and the emphasis will change drastically if elderly parents move into their children’s homes. But the basics are still essentially the same … prepare your home and yourself for a new set of priorities, and above all retain your sense of humor.

The increases were enacted anyway. Why?

Because a state law that requires condo associations to get approval from unit owners for annual budgets made it nearly impossible to defeat a budget at large complexes.

The state law – enacted 2009 – finally requires condo associations to permit all unit owners – not just board members – to have all necessary budget documents and then to be able to vote on annual budgets. But, the law requires that 51 percent of ALL unit owners vote against the budget to be able to reject it.

What it did in effect was to mandate that all NON-votes be automatically counted as YES votes. While that might be ok for a small complex with few units, it doesn’t work well with large complexes, especially those filled with seniors. Keep in mind, senior condo complex are very popular in Connecticut and about 250,000 condo units are located in this state.

Could you imagine if a town required that more than half of ALL registered voters had to vote against the budget to be able to reject it?

Maintenance fees – just like town budgets – are a huge bone of contention in all condo complexes. There are those who believe that constantly improving their complex will raise the value of their homes, while others, especially those living on fixed incomes demand the fees be limited.

Southbury’s Heritage Village

Let’s look at what happened last October at Heritage Village in Southbury, the largest age-restricted condo complex in the state. The complex – for those 55 and older – has 2,580 units with an annual budget of $15 million, only slightly less than the town’s $18 million budget.

A pool at Heritage Village

The board of directors voted for a more than three percent fee increase. There was a huge turnout with 1,746 owners participating either in person or through valid proxies. Of that number 1,191 voted against the budget and  595 voted for it. But there were no votes cast from 754 units.

So under the state law, even though twice as many voted against the budget as those who voted in favor, the budget was adopted because the 754 non-votes were counted as YES votes.

“It is grotesque,” Dr. Salvatore Pace, a retired physician, said of the statute. “It is counterintuitive that a failure to vote should be anything but no vote  … especially when it comes to this complex. It’s not at all democratic. I know of no other instance where this occurs.”

“The average age here is 82,” he said in a telephone interview, explaining that many of the owners have dementia, are in hospitals, nursing homes, or living part of the year in Florida. Other units are in limbo because their owners have died while many others are owned by investors who aren’t interested in voting.

“My next door neighbor will be 100″ this year, Dr. Pace said. “He doesn’t care what the maintenance fee is and isn’t voting.”

Fed Up With Fee Increases

Dr. Pace and many others living on fixed incomes do care. “I have been here for four years and the fees have increased by 16 percent,” he said.

As a self-described “young dude at 69,” Dr. Pace is now president of the Concerned Residents Club Of Heritage Village, which was formed in the late 1990s when a group tried to pass a 15 percent fee increase.

Last month he invited two members of the General Assembly to hear complaints from condo owners who asked that the law be changed to permit budgets to be defeated in a more democratic manner.

The size of the maintenance fee is just one of many hot button issues where many condo owners feel they have less rights than association board of directors, who sometimes run complexes to benefit themselves and their friends.

A state-wide group of volunteers called Connecticut Condo Owners Coalition is asking the General Assembly to pass legislation this year to even the playing field so that condo owners could have more rights and more voice at how their complexes are managed.

While many condo owners may not be happy with the way their board of directors run their complexes, there are few proposals that would benefit all. The needs of owners of small, medium and large complexes are sometimes different. Those in large association with professional management, and active members, have less of a need for state protection.

But many in smaller condo complexes want the state to create a condo ombudsman who could mediate disputes between boards and unit owners. Without that, a condo owner who feels victimized has to hire an attorney to fight the board and may end up paying not only for his lawyer but the condo complex’s lawyer.

Dr. Pace said he is against the creation of another bureaucracy like an ombudsman because in all likelihood it would have to be funded by increasing all owners’ condo fees. He is more interested in getting the condo budget law changed.

Brian Harte, a leader of the state-wide group, gives an example of why state protection and oversight is necessary.

At his complex in Beacon Falls, the board of directors pushed through a seven percent fee increase in last December, even though Harte had warned them at the budget meeting that the vote was illegal.

Having heard what had taken place at Heritage Village, Harte had done his research prior the meeting. He studied the new state law and the bylaws of his association, with 207 units. Proxy votes had been gathered from 70 unit owners opposed to the increase.

There was widespread opposition to the increase, in part because in July they had approved a $125,000 special assessment which many unit owners believed would blunt any increase in the annual budget. But when they got a peek at the proposed budget, Harte said, he was unable to make sense of the operating budget spreadsheet and items appears to be missing. The $125,000 did not appear to be fully accounted for.

At the start of the meeting the board was asked whether the budget vote would be taken under the association fuzzy by-laws or under the state statute with the requirement of a majority of no votes to defeat a budget. The 30 or so unit owners were told that state rules would govern the meeting.

In that case, Harte told the board that the meeting was illegal because not all the required financial documents had been presented to unit owners under the time frame the state law required.

The board turned to its professional manager, Tim Barth from Imagineers, one of the largest condo and apartment management companies in the state.

Harte said Barth conceded that the law wasn’t followed to the letter, but told the board and the unit owners that it would be a waste to have another meeting during the holidays. The board agreed and because less than half of the unit owners voted to reject the budget it was approved.

Harte contacted me and I contacted Imagineers telling them that I was planning to write about this issue. Imagineers officials declined to respond directly to my question about why their representative encouraged an illegal vote. But the firm got a legal opinion which supported Harte’s contention and a new budget meeting was conducted last month.

This time the budget had Harte’s support. He said that the second time the budget had been fully explained and he was satisfied that the increase was necessary.

That incident highlights how even with a state law requiring full and timely disclosure, and a professional management service working for the board, some will skirt the rules for efficiency.

Then of course there is the issue of the required majority no vote.

“It doesn’t make any sense,” Harte said. “The people who show up at the meetings are the ones who care about their condo complex.” They are the ones who should made decisions, not the ones who don’t vote, he said.

She returned to the state Capitol  in late January,  went right back to work and says  she’ll be running for another term!

“Too many important things are happening, I’ve got to be here,” she told the Hartford Courant.

Prague, 86,  attended a press conference on the issue of home health care options for the elderly and disabled.

State Sen. Edith Prague, New London Day photo

“It is no secret that anybody who needs care wants to be at home to get that care,” Prague said, adding that she’s “living proof” that home care works.

Prague said she suffered a minor stroke on Christmas. “My daughter came over and noticed that the left side of my face didn’t look right,” she said. “There was nothing else. When I got to the hospital, they told me it was a very minor stroke, lucky for me, because strokes can be devastating.”

“These reimbursements are a good first step in compensating our residents for the long-term outages that occurred as a result of the October Nor’easter.  But the real task at hand is making sure that our utility companies are better prepared to handle an event like this the next time it comes around.

“We’ve learned much since the two storms hit Connecticut last year, both from the Witt Report and the recommendations from the Two Storm Panel.  Earlier this month, I announced a set of proposals that will help to put our utility companies and state and local governments in a better position to plan for and respond to an emergency.

“In the coming days, we’re going to introduce a bill that will raise the standards and benchmarks that PURA will implement for utility companies, regulations that will provide a clear incentive for proper preparation and timely repairs.

“And later this year, our Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection will conduct the largest state-wide emergency preparedness drill in recent history, so that we know what to do when a real time situation comes our way.

“These are concrete steps that will improve our emergency response, but they by no means represent the totality of our actions.  Effective emergency management demands that we constantly evolve and improve, and my administration will do just that in the weeks and months ahead.”

CL&P today announced that approximately 192,000 Connecticut residents will receive a credit for $140 as a result of the long-term power outages following the October Nor’easter.  Initially, the utility offered to set up a fund of $10 million, but they increased that contribution to $30 million after the Governor told them he thought it was inadequate given the extent of hardship many residents faced.