My impression of Thursday night’s Lakewood City Council meeting was that Lakewood needs to buckle down in the face of bankruptcy, strengthen an atmosphere for bringing new young families into the city, and to do this, we need to throw out the elderly and encourage them to die off more quickly so we can utilize their much needed space.

The Auditorium of Lakewood City Hall was filled Thursday night, the 27th of March 2008, and most of those present were senior citizens. According to Council President Michael Dever, this was nearly the final meeting, while there were a dozen previous, regarding the city budget. Many cuts were made previously, and now the ax is about to fall on the Office on Aging and the Refuse Department.

Dever was incredibly rude to both the senior population present and to a woman who begged the council to listen to the seniors’ concerns. Dever treated her with disrespect upon this request, and in effect, he was asking her to sit down and shut up. He said that this was nearly the last meeting when a dozen had come before it over the last few months and that only one other meeting had an audience. This was apparently too late a time for the seniors to show their concerns. My silent question was why had no one told the seniors they were going to be thrown out into the cold sooner? How can the council criticize these people when they never told any of the seniors that their fate was to be decided in this manner? His behavior was appalling and the seniors all deserve a formal apology from him.

It was not exactly easy to find out about what was going on at these meetings. If cuts are to be made in the city, whether it is with refuse or with senior services or anything else, the public should be made more aware. On the city’s website, I found the minutes cumbersome to read and difficult to follow, and the most recent meetings were not posted. Imagine how much worse that small investigation would be for a senior citizen. The seniors present were lucky they found out about all of this as soon as they did, which now seems to be too late.

When the seniors finally did have a chance to talk, many of their comments seemed to be given a consoling nod of acceptance while secretly being disregarded. The seniors did not miss a beat. A woman in the audience asked if there was really any point to their being at the meeting since none of their concerns were really being considered. The council again said that there had been a dozen prior budget meetings and this was the second to last before deciding on this issue.

It was mentioned by the council that cuts were also coming from the Refuse Department, which serves the nearly 29,000 households of Lakewood. One senior woman said that she already takes her cans, glass, plastic, paper, and yard waste to the tree lawn, and she can certainly handle taking one more can of garbage to the front. A man who works for the Refuse Department said that if the city gets rid of backyard pickup, the streets will be a mess. The Mayor commented that Lakewood has always had the best senior care and it still will, just to a lesser degree. I question why other communities that have to take their garbage to the street don't seem to have a mess on their hands.

It was mentioned from the audience that Lakewood has always been the gold standard with regard to senior care and that we shouldn’t be compared to other communities because the rest pale with respect to what we do for our seniors. We care for our seniors not because we have to, but because we love them and they are our future selves. I am sure it is not really an issue of backyard pickup versus senior care, and I am sure that even if we cut out backyard pickup, it would not be enough to save our Office on Aging. But once these cuts go through, I cannot see how they would ever be recovered, and I see this as just the first step in a future full-elimination.

Maybe our council should stop taking so much time to congratulate themselves on making such hard decisions and instead work on the harder task of saving our respect and care for those who should be the most prized citizens we have.