By DAVID W. CHEN
The Bloomberg administration is scrambling to come up with contingency plans to close as many as one-fifth of the city’s 321 senior centers after being caught off guard by an obscure state budget proposal that would slash the centers’ financing by nearly 30 percent.
Describing what the loss of state money would mean for the centers, Lilliam Barrios-Paoli, the city’s commissioner at the Department for the Aging, was blunt. “Catastrophic,” she said.
Only in the last couple of weeks have city officials and advocates for the elderly become fully aware of Gov. David A. Paterson’s decision because it was not the typical budget reduction that becomes part of the annual jousting between Albany and New York City.
Instead, the proposal would alter an arcane formula and redirect $25 million in federal money that has traditionally been set aside for senior centers toward state programs to combat domestic violence and elder abuse.
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