Pomona : Meeting on Cubans Set

Federal, state and local officials will meet at the Pomona Police Department on April 8 to discuss two Pomona-area halfway houses occupied by mentally handicapped Cubans who came to the United States in the 1980 Mariel boatlift.

Jim Morgan, a deputy secretary for the state Health and Welfare Agency, said the meeting was prompted by complaints about the facilities from Rep. David Dreier (R-Covina) and state Sen. Ruben Ayala (D-San Bernardino).

The two legislators, Mayor Donna Smith and Police Chief Richard Tefank have said the 79 residents of the halfway houses pose a crime threat to adjacent neighborhoods. Ayala has also complained that his district, which includes three prisons and two state mental hospitals, has become a “dumping ground” for such facilities.

Staff workers with Western Care Centers Inc., which operates Pomona Manor in Pomona and Country Manor in Chino, have called concerns about crime problems “overblown.” Shallie Marshall, who administers the Cuban refugee mental health program for the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services, has said the federal government does not intend to close the houses.

Marshall is expected to attend the meeting, which will include officials from the U. S. Department of Justice, Dreier and Ayala and members of the legislators’ staffs. Smith, Tefank and other city officials are also expected to attend.

“I would hope that the federal government would agree to move them out to another area,” Ayala said in an interview last week. “Why do the people of my district deserve all these institutions when the state is 1,000 miles long?”