Possible consolidation of Area Agency on Aging centers leaves elderly feeling left out
It's dollars and cents versus a sense of community.
That's the way users of Butler County's 10 senior centers view a possible option to reduce the number of days senior centers would operate.
Citing attendance issues, Beth Herold, administrator of the county Area Agency on Agency, said the agency is considering a plan to have two centers at the Cranberry Township Municipal Center and a new site in Butler as main hubs with rural centers being open three days a week. Buses would take seniors to the hub sites.
For many clients and volunteers, the plan is a nonstarter.
James Stewart. 72, of Evans City who uses the center in Ritzert Hall, said, “Personally, I am not leaving Evans City. It's just too far to travel every day. I don't see any future in it.”
Helen Maley, 84 of Donegal Township, who attends the Chicora senior center, said of the plan, “I don't think they are going to draw the crowd that they think.”
'Trying to have busing, seniors here would have to have a central pickup place,” said Maley. “Seniors are so scattered about. Where would they park their cars?”
“I think we ought to keep what we have here,” she added.
Jean Bell, 91, of Forestville, said she comes at least twice a week to the Slippery Rock center and has done so since it opened.
“I love it here. I have the best time,” Bell said.
A move out of the township building where the present center is located would not please Bell at all.
“I would just have to quit because I could not drive to Butler,” she said.
Bob Gladd, 76, of Butler said he has been coming to the Butler Senior Center at Tanglewood every day for at least the last three years.
“What do they say, 'Time goes fast when you are having fun?'” he said. “You can spend the time here in company, the camaraderie, the meals.”As far as closing or moving the Butler center, Gladd said, “I'm against it 150 percent.”“I'd probably go if it was close enough,” he conceded, but added he and his fellow seniors “we're creatures of habit. We enjoy this place.”Cathy Noring, 81, who lives in Penn-Mar Plaza in Mars has been using the senior center on its first floor for 15 years. “I come down to the center every day. I eat here. I volunteer here. I make crafts and decorate the place. We sell candy as a fundraiser. I play bingo and volunteer at the intake desk three days a week.”“I don't know abut any of the other centers, I just know about this center here.” she said. “Because I'm on a walker I can't travel too far away. I'm not in favor of closing. We need our center.”Bobbie Davis, 75, of Slippery Rock Township, has been going to the center for five years. She is a volunteer with an art program.Davis said keeping individual centers “fosters a sense of community more than a big, unfamiliar space. And they promote neighborliness. If it goes to a larger center it will be too impersonal.”“I've gotten to know people here,” Davis said. “People here have a good time and enjoy being with each other. It's convenient, and I think older people probably like smaller rather than larger.”And it's not just the senior citizens who would feel a loss if the centers were shuttered.Barbara Harp of Grove City is a Silver Sneakers (senior fitness) teacher who has been leading five classes a week for over a decade at the Slippery Rock center.
“It took 10 years to build up community here. I am very concerned that the community will be destroyed by having our people being asked to travel a distance to a large space where they will become anonymous,” Harp said.“The friendship is just as important as the fitness part. Our motto is 'Fitness and Friends,'” said Harp.She added, “We were never consulted or given any kind of warning nor were we asked for any kind of input.”“The whole process was very inconsiderate, especially considering how vulnerable seniors can be,” Harp said.Closing the Slippery Rock senior center would be a disservice to both the seniors and the Slippery Rock University students who visit every day, said Amanda Donahue, a recreational therapy major at the school.By working with SRU students, Donahue said, seniors have a chance to improve their cognitive abilities and preserve their independence and students get some real-world experience, benefits that both groups will lose if the center is closed.Lois Larsen, 78, a retired teacher from Cherry Township who has gone to the center three days a week for at least the past seven years, said. “I think Butler is going overboard with consolidation. The fire department, the schools and now us.”“Stop and consider the people. The process is not the most important thing,” Larsen said. 'Downsizing to four days a week would be preferable.”Larsen added recent attendance figures were adversely affected by the severe winter weather and road conditions.Connie Collier, 65, of Chicora, has been going to the center there every day for the past six years.“Whenever I first started coming it was with my late husband who had dementia. He knew everyone here and he felt comfortable here,” she said.“It is like our extended family here. He passed away three years ago.” Collier said.“After he passed, if I didn't have a place to go to and socialize, it would be a very sad life,” Collier said.“It would be a very, very sad day to see our center close,” said Collier. “I cannot understand.”Collier also can't understand why the seniors who use the centers are also expected to raise money for their operation.“I don't know why Butler County can't give the money so we don't have to work so hard to make the $750 a month to keep this place open,” said Collier, adding the Chicora seniors had made noodles, soup and relish to sell to raise the needed cash.Collier said it's primarily center users who buy the products.Bruce Brodmerkel of Chicora did more than buy soup. He said when the center's refrigerator broke, he bought it a new one.Kathy Kloock of Butler Township complained that seniors were expected to do too much fundraising and pay too much toward the center's operations.“We are expected to raise 5 percent of the cost of running the center,” Kloock said. “And it's going up to 10 percent in 2016 and 15 percent in 2017. We have white elephant sales. We sell candy bars, apple dumplings, hoagies.”“Seniors don't have the money to put toward this kind of thing,” Kloock said. “All these sales, they do them right here and we are the ones who buy. And now they are talking about closing the center.”Sam Hunsicker of Jackson Township who goes to the Evans City center, said “It's the same people all the time that keep working, buying and contributing. They make the soup and buy the soup. Even so, it keeps us off the streets.”Nadine Stewart, 60, who attends the Slippery Rock center, asked where the money was going. She noted the Area Agency on Aging receives state lottery money but still requires each center to fundraise.With the possible closure of the center, Stewart said fundraising enthusiasm has dropped.“What's the point? If what they say is going to happen, happens, why do the fundraising if we are not doing it for ourselves,” Stewart said.Herold noted the fundraising was set up with the management company, Nutrition Inc., that supplies meals to the centers and that it has provoked an outrcry.“We are looking at ways to decrease this,” she said. She said she has been traveling to the different centers to hear seniors' concerns.Catherine Double, 80, of Chicora, said, “I don't know what the future holds. If the county would just support us like the other counties help their centers, we wouldn't be in this situation.”
