The planned closure of Sullivan County’s Care Center at Sunset Lake is being challenged by litigation, filed by civil rights attorney Michael Sussman.<\/p>\n
Friends and family of staff and residents of Sunset Lake urged the county Legislature to reverse their decision during public comments at Thursday’s legislature meeting.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt should be put to the residents of Sullivan County, put the taxpayers of the county. Hold a referendum,” said Lou Setren, a member of Sunset Lake’s Family Council. “Let them decide how their tax dollars are spent.\u201d<\/p>\n
After public comment, Sussman spoke about the lawsuit filed against the county on behalf of residents, their families and staff of Sunset Lake. He said that a proper closure plan was not followed and that the county is \u201crushing\u201d to get residents moved to new facilities despite the timeline being at least 90 days. It\u2019s been less than a month since the county announced the facilities closure on Aug. 19.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe patients’ needs have to be reviewed with the patient, his or her family, caregivers,” he said. “The rush, which we’ve talked about, has disallowed that process from being actualized and failure to actualize leaves people, as I’ve said before, more vulnerable.\u201d<\/p>\n
Setren said he’s heard from residents and their families that they’re being pushed by the care center’s administrative team to leave as soon as possible.<\/p>\n
“They have engaged in deception and fear tactics to convince residents and their families that whatever transfer opportunities were available to them, they should take that transfer because as time goes on, there will be fewer beds available close to Sullivan County,” he said.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, a State Supreme Court judge ruled that the county could not continue implementing the closure plan until a court hearing. That means, temporarily, that residents cannot be moved out of the facility and no staff can be laid off.<\/p>\n
Sullivan County\u2019s spokesperson declined to comment on the pending litigation.<\/p>\n
The case will be heard in Ulster County Court, after every judge in Sullivan County recused themselves. The case will be in session at the Ulster County Courthouse in Kingston at 1:30 p.m. Monday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The planned closure of Sullivan County’s Care Center at Sunset Lake is being challenged by litigation, filed by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":349801,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[2953,199,17905,9,11,10,49,51,50,12,87,200],"class_list":["post-349800","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-health","tag-hudson-valley","tag-john-camera","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-new-york-state","tag-new-york-state-headlines","tag-new-york-state-news","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349800","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=349800"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349800\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/349801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=349800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=349800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=349800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}