Kevin Riordan: South Jersey Eye Center hopes to see its way through budget cuts

Emergency repairs prevented the South Jersey Eye Center from falling down in 2007, but a decrease in funding may prove tougher to fix.

"We just can't take care of everybody," says optometrist Lawrence A. Ragone, who cofounded the clinic in 1961. As S.J. Eye marks its 50th anniversary, "we are really at a crossroads," he adds.

The center, formerly known as the Camden Eye Center, is headquartered in downtown Camden on Chambers Avenue. It provides eye exams, corrective lenses, and other services to about 11,000 adults and children a year at locations throughout Camden County.

It accepts Medicaid and Medicare, and public and private funding allow the center to treat about a quarter of all patients free, down from about half several years ago.

"We can't do that any more," Ragone says. "We may have to think about downsizing everything we do."

Services, which include a clinic on wheels and offices in Collingswood and Gloucester Township, grew steadily for decades. So did the number of patients.

But in 2007, Gov. Jon S. Corzine eliminated the center's $350,000 appropriation - more than a quarter of what was then its $1.3 million budget. Making the squeeze worse, grant money shrank as the economy tanked.

The budget has been cut to $890,000, two staff members were recently laid off, and a third has had his hours reduced. The mobile clinic, which makes 160 stops at schools and other facilities every year, will likely have its schedule trimmed.

"We visit the senior citizen buildings in Camden and the suburbs. A lot of those people don't have transportation," says Ragone, 83, of Cherry Hill.

"We see a multitude of vision and eye-health problems, including glaucoma and macular degeneration. But the number of people we serve is going to go down significantly, because we don't have the funding."

Ragone is scheduled to testify at an Assembly budget hearing at Camden County College on Wednesday. The center has asked for $200,000 from the state, which seems unlikely as New Jersey continues to cut programs.

But the low-key Ragone does not give up easily.

The proud graduate of Camden High School, Class of '46, set up Camden Eye with, perhaps, $150 cash. Back then, a typical office visit cost $5 to $10, which still was beyond the reach of many city residents.

Ragone and four idealistic young colleagues set up in a $1-a-year, city-owned space in Convention Hall on Haddon Avenue and volunteered their services to those unable to pay. The three-room office suite was outfitted with donated equipment; the Camden Lions Club was their principal benefactor.

"That first year, we saw maybe 100 people," many of them free, Ragone recalls. By 1970, the number had grown to about 600, and the center moved to larger quarters on Benson Street.

The mobile van got on the road in 1996 (it has been replaced once), and in 2000 the center moved to 400 Chambers Ave.

It was there that the Eye Center's financial nightmare began with a frantic phone call just before Christmas in 2007.

An employee discovered that part of the building's third floor, carved out of two rowhouses, was collapsing. Emergency repairs were enough to get the clinic reopened after a week, but a full reconstruction forced it to move to temporary quarters for eight months in 2008.

While nothing fancy, the rebuilt Chambers Street clinic offers pleasant surroundings. Patients are treated with respect, says Sandra Brogsdale, a 56-year-old disabled Clementon resident.

"If it wasn't for the clinic, I'd still be using [nonprescription] reading glasses, which were giving me headaches," she says.

South Jersey Eye "gets the services to the people who can benefit the most, without a lot of overhead," says Jeffrey Gans, a longtime Camden Lions Club member.

"Why do we do this?" Ragone says. "We do it because we're helping people, and because if we don't do it, I'm not sure what happens.

"We are very proud of the number of people we've been able to assist," he adds. "And now, we need somebody to assist us."