Funding for a Parsippany project designed to enable seniors to age in place fell victim to a presidential veto of an appropriations bill last week.

On Nov. 13, President George Bush vetoed the Labor-Health and Human Services-Education Appropriations Bill for Fiscal Year 2008. The bill had passed in the Senate and in the House. An attempt to override the veto on Nov. 15 failed in the House.

The appropriations bill contained earmarks for aging-in-place initiatives for five New Jersey federations, totaling more than $1.5 million.

Of that, $500,000 was earmarked for United Jewish Communities of MetroWest New Jersey. The money was to have been used to maintain the naturally occurring retirement community (NORC) project known as Parsippany LIVE — Lifelong Involvement for Vital Elders, and to replicate the model in other communities.

"We're in a holding pattern," said Lori Price-Abrams, director of the UJC MetroWest Community Relations Committee, after hearing of the veto. "Our contacts in Washington, DC, have told us that there is a compromise in the works and that at the moment, earmarks are still being considered. This is one project being considered, but it is not the only one," she said.

Acknowledging her disappointment, Price-Abrams said, "We are pursuing other sorts of funding opportunities, but some of the services we are providing will be phased out. At a certain point, we can't provide programs that we can't support."

Parsippany LIVE, part of a growing trend of NORCs in suburban communities, uses private donations and federal money to provide services that help aging residents stay in their homes and stay connected to the larger community.

The Parsippany NORC project was funded in 2005 for one year through a federal demonstration grant from the Administration on Aging. The project also lost its federal funding in 2007 when the Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations Bill FY 2007 did not pass.

While some of the projects seeded by UJC MetroWest and its partners in the NORC project have been taken over by the community, Price-Abrams said, "We've had to scale down. We don't have all the money we've had in the past."