Pioneer Home future at stake again

The Joint Appropriations Committee for the State of Wyoming will be meeting in Thermopolis next Wednesday and Thursday and it looks as though Tom Forslund, the Director of the Department of Health, may be gearing up for another run at selling the Wyoming Pioneer Home.

In their wisdom, Wyoming’s founding fathers created the Wyoming Pioneer Home, by state legislation in 1949, for “the purpose of providing a place for the care and maintenance of residents of this state who are afflicted with the infirmities of old age.” (W.S. 25-8-101)

Here in Hot Springs County, we look at the possible sale and privatization of the Pioneer Home from the angle of loss of about 30 jobs and the affect it would have on our community’s economy, but there is a much larger picture.

The sale and privatization of the institution is an affront to every elderly person in the State of Wyoming. Forslund and his committee are literally pulling the rug out from under our senior citizens in order to save $2.5 million a year.

Not only would privatization double the costs for Wyoming’s elderly to come to this beautiful place to spend their golden years, imagine those who are already at home in the Pioneer Home being transferred to another facility because they can no longer afford to live there.

Imagine if your rent went from $1,600 a month to over $3,000 a month. Where would you go? How would you get there – a bus, an ambulance?

As Wyoming residents, you are well within your rights to attend the public portion of the meeting on Wednesday afternoon at 2:30 p.m. at the Pioneer Home and we encourage you to be there, enmasse, to let Forslund and his committee know how you feel.

This goes beyond a local problem.

It is a state-wide problem.

We promised our elderly, in 1949, that we would be there for them in their old age. We promised them they would have someplace to call home.

Its time to step up for our parents, our grandparents and all of the senior citizens of Wyoming.