MONTICELLO – “Hopefully move
from an organization that keeps putting out fires to an organization that
actually is doing the daily work,” is how Sullivan County’s
acting Health and Family Services Commissioner Joseph Todora terms the
progress that has been made lately.
Todora and Deputy Commissioner Dr. William Moon provided a detailed and
generally optimistic update at Thursday’s county legislature Health
and Family Services Committee.
Todora said citizen accessibility is a top priority.
“My goal is to make it easier, to make it faster from application
to either benefit or denial, and to provide information to those individuals
that allows for clear communication.”
Last fall, the county failed to keep up with over 10,000 requests for
Home Energy Assistance Program (HEAP) assistance.
That’s the mess Moon agreed to come out of retirement to fix.
“We’re starting to peel away what I would describe as excess
layers of process,” Moon said.
That means getting current with applications.
“We’re daily,” Moon said.
Because of the brutally cold February, the state announced this week a
second round of HEAP eligibility.
