Towns face higher costs for helping veterans

[ Originally published on: Tuesday, November 10, 2009 ]

As the annual holiday honoring them approaches, veterans are facing another battle from a strained economy and cutbacks in services, say area veterans agents. And Franklin County towns are bracing for what they see as a surge in the number of veterans turning to them for help.

''They're coming out of the woodwork,'' Buckland Town Administrator Andrea Llamas told legislators recently, after watching the veterans services in her town quadruple this year to an estimated $52,000. Voters at a special town meeting there Thursday approved nearly $30,000, beyond the $12,000 appropriation made last spring, to cover expenditures so far.

''It's a large jump,'' she said, explaining that the state reimburses 75 percent of those expenses, but that it takes up to 18 months in some cases to get the money.

Nor is Buckland alone.

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