Community Leaders Defend Senior Opportunity Center Meals

Pictured are senior citizens who visit the Senior Opportunity Center in Asheville, saying they find comfort in sharing and helping each other. Front row (from left to right): Mary Briscoe, Johnnie McCorkle, Geneva Fate, Lillie Carson, Hattie Carson. Middle row: Lucille Smith, Gaynell Galloway, Spark Haynes, Ivan Donaldson, Alvin Fate, Frances Water. Back row: Steve Watson, and Barbara Young.  File photo: Urban News

from Staff Reports

As a result of community concern expressed at a June 30 meeting, the Senior Opportunity Center will once again be serving meals five days a week, Angela Pittman of Department of Social Servics announced on July 7. The County Commissioners have stated their willingness to keep serving the lunches for six months while efforts are made to boost attendance to an average of twenty participants per day. Fund-raising may still be needed. Tyrone Greenlee announced that a church has volunteered to make a donation, after hearing of the seniors’ plight.

At the meeting, convened by Bob Smith of Community
Relations Council on June 30, community leaders spoke up for senior
citizens. Oralene Simmons, Executive Director of the MLK Association,
community historian and activist Willie Mae Brown, Reverend Dr. Charles
Mosley, Reverend Spencer Hardaway, Reverend Dr. L. C. Ray, and Tyrone
Greenlee, Executive Director of Churches for a United Community, wanted
to know why the Senior Opportunity Center (SOC) on Grove Street was no
longer serving meals. (As of July 1, seniors previously served at SOC
are being transported via Mountain Mobility to the West Asheville
Senior Center three days per week.)

After Oralene Simmons outlined the problem
and the lack of notice given to community leaders, Willie Mae Brown
stated, “It’s a hardship on our senior citizens, many of whom are
black. For a lot of them, it’s their main meal of the day. As a senior
citizen myself, I know that older people get comfortable going to a
certain place, and don’t like change. They may get confused, and stay
home.”

Others suggested that with the cost of
transportation going up, it might not be cost effective to transport
SOC seniors to West Asheville center for the meal.

Dr. Mosley pointed out that the site at
West Asheville is a small, single room, with no space for the variety
of activities that take place at the Senior Opportunities Center.
Mountain Mobility will pick people up at their homes for the lunch and
then bring them home afterwards, not allowing much time for
participation in other enrichment activities. He pointed out that
without the meal at SOC on Wednesdays, it was less likely that people
would continue to come for the Bible Study class he conducts there. Dr.
Mosley expressed his concern that community leaders were neither
informed nor consulted. “We are owed an explanation and an apology,” he
declared. “Please reconsider.”

Representatives from the Land of Sky
Regional Council Area Agency on Aging (AAA), the Council on Aging, and
Parks and Recreation did their best to explain the situation. Rebecca
Chaplin of the Area Agency on Aging expressed her deep regret for the
cuts. Phil Gale, Council on Aging’s Senior Dining Manager, is
responsible to the AAA, which receives both federal and county funding
for the seven meal sites in Buncombe County. In response to the charge
that the community was not informed, Gale stated that they had been on
WLOS and in the newspapers talking about the problem. He revealed that
in November 2007, meal costs increased by 20%, up to $5.45 per plate
per day, while their funding has not increased in the past four years.
The County instructed him to raise attendance to 25 per site, and cut
costs within the six months which ended May 1st.

Gale tried without success to find a lower
priced provider than the Buncombe County Child Care Services Kitchen.
In order to decrease the cost of staff and overhead, combining sites
seemed the best solution. Despite efforts by the staff including
outreach to churches, the Senior Opportunity Center was averaging only
12 seniors per meal. These were the lowest numbers of all the meal
sites. Faced with the need to cut back from 2,500 to 2,000 meals per
month, Gale has already made the decision to stop serving meals at the
Asheville Terrace site and to cut back Black Mountain’s meals to three
a week.

Amy Rigman of Parks and Recreation assured
everyone that the Senior Opportunity Center would remain open and offer
activities, even if not serving meals. “We have a responsibility to
care for our elderly,” said Bob Smith, and requested possible
solutions. Send a delegation to the County Commissioners with
petitions? Ask churches to chip in with a bag lunch on Wednesdays?
Appeal to the public for funds? Write a grant? Bring Asheville
Terrace’s seniors to the SOC to bring the numbers up? Attendees are
continuing to meet on Monday evenings. Smith declared, “The energy in
this room is what will make the meals program work.”