Published: November 09, 2009 11:11 pm      

City fights for senior meals program

EDMOND — Edmond is not willing to have its senior nutrition site remain closed or its state and federal funding shut down, Mayor Patrice Douglas said.

“It’s not a matter of Edmond wanting more than its fair share. We’re just asking that we all take the fair share of the burden,” Douglas said Monday morning at a press conference with a group of city and state leaders.

More than 100 concerned seniors united at the Downtown Community Center, 28 E. Main St., Monday morning to voice their opposition to the closure last week of Edmond’s senior nutrition site by the Areawide Aging Agency.

“We’ve been in lock-step, trying to be sure our story is heard,” Douglas said.

A state budget cut of $173,000 diminished the Oklahoma County Senior Nutrition Program. An order by the Areawide Aging Agency cut Edmond’s senior nutrition program by $53,000, enough to end the program. Of the 27 senior nutrition sites, Douglas said Edmond is absorbing one-third of the cost cuts.

State lawmakers are preparing to work with a $1 billion budget shortfall, said state Rep. Lewis Moore, R-Edmond. But Edmond’s senior nutrition site does not deserve to be shut down, he added.

“There’s going to be more cutbacks. So I’ll be prioritizing what the state agencies are doing,” Moore said. “Are they prioritizing themselves and their employees and their missions?”

An average of 85 seniors a day ate the free meals at the Edmond Senior Center in 2008. This number would sometimes swell to 115 before AAA capped the site to feed only 65 people daily, said Gail Deaton, executive director of the Edmond Senior Center. So Deaton found some private donations to raise the 65-meal cap set by the Areawide Aging Agency.

Twenty percent of the cost of Mobile Meals for Edmond’s homebound seniors is provided by the City of Edmond, Douglas said. Citizens, churches, grants and philanthropic organizations provide 80 percent of the Mobile Meals budget, she said.

“I’m not going to apologize for the fact that we are a top-quality, top-caliber community in the state,” Douglas said. “I’m going to be proud of that fact. … That didn’t come without planning and it didn’t come without vision.”

Edmond was targeted for having a leadership role in the community, she said.

Edmond has been told it does not need the senior nutrition site because it no longer feeds frail seniors who are homebound, Douglas said. But Edmond has been doing what a community should by having the private sector volunteering to serve homebound meals, Douglas said.

“Those 200-plus homebound meals that were being served didn’t count in the numbers they were counting when they decided to close this facility,” she said. “What I want to make clear to everyone is we do have homebound seniors who are frail and are at risk.

“We as a community were taking care of them in the right way. … We were letting people take care of people, and because of that, we were targeted for closure.”

More than 250 people take part Edmond Senior Center programs each day at the MAC in Mitch Park, Deaton said. Its multipurpose program draws from Guthrie, Luther and Piedmont, she said. The Oklahoma County Nutrition Program serves adults older than the age of 60.

“Our seniors aren’t necessarily more affluent because they live in Edmond or around Edmond,” she said. “They are on a fixed income and they should not be judged by their surroundings.”

Three percent of Edmond’s seniors live under the poverty threshold, Deaton said. More than 650 adults older than 65 in the Edmond and Guthrie area fall below the poverty threshold.

The Senior Center was one of the most visited sites in the four-county district by serving between 60 to 70 warm meals a day, sometimes seniors’ only meal for the day, Douglas said.

Being served a free meal may be the only thing that gets some isolated seniors out of their homes for social interaction, Deaton said. About 55 seniors would volunteer in the kitchen.

“This very act of getting up and out can help keep them from developing depression,” Deaton said.

It gets people out of bed to socialize, eat a meal and feel wanted, said Oren Lee Peters, 88, a member of the Oklahoma County Nutrition Foundation.

Also a volunteer at the Edmond Senior Center, Peters said he was told the Edmond nutrition site would close when he attended his first meeting. Peters said he told them the closure would make a lot of people in Edmond unhappy.

“They said, ‘Well, it just doesn’t fit,’” Peters said. “And they went on with their meeting and they kept their promise.”

Peters said he is the only person on the board in favor of keeping the nutrition site in Edmond.

“I’ll still be working to try to keep this center because Edmond needs it,” he said.

State Rep. Marian Cooksey, R-Edmond, said she will keep trying to preserve the Edmond senior nutrition site. Her late mother had been one who would benefit from the free meals, she said.

“The reason she lived as long as she did was because of people like you who shared their meals with her,” Cooksey said.

People are asking for fairness, said state Rep. Randy McDaniel, R-Edmond.

“We’re going to have to make some tough decisions in the next couple of years,” he said. “But when we make those tough decisions, we can have those decisions based on fairness.”

The Edmond City Council passed a resolution Monday night against the closure of Edmond’s senior nutrition site. Douglas said she hopes the Edmond community will continue pulling together to care for its residents.

Congress-woman Mary Fallin told The Edmond Sun that the statewide budget cuts to seniors’ nutrition programs have been unsettling. Oklahoma always has been a state of generous, compassionate men and women, she said.

“No one in Oklahoma, particularly the most vulnerable of our citizens — the elderly and the poor — should be left to go hungry,” said Fallin, a 2010 gubernatorial candidate.

Fallin said she hopes the Legislature will find a way to quickly restore the funds.

“While we wait for our Legislature to find a solution, I hope that our faith-based organizations and our communities will be able to pull together and provide immediate relief,” Fallin said.

State Sen. Andrew Rice said he favors activating the Rainy Day Fund to offset cuts in the senior nutrition program.

“That will be good for Edmond. I know that Edmond has been hit pretty hard,” Rice said Monday at the University of Central Oklahoma Policy Institute.

Senior Center participant Stan Noxon said that Oklahomans need to pause to remember that this senior generation saved the world from the wrath of Nazi Germany and Japanese imperialism.

“We need to realize these are the same seniors that got up on their hands and knees, like Oren Lee Peters, and turned this country around in the insaneness of the biggest war we’ve ever had,” Noxon said. “These are the same seniors we’re talking about.”



jcoburn@edmondsun.com | 341-2121, ext. 114