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October 22, 2009

Budget cuts affect senior meal delivery in Ottawa County

By Krista Duhon

news@joplinglobe.com

MIAMI, Okla. — Meal services for some seniors in Commerce are being eliminated at the end of the month after the Oklahoma Department of Human Services recently cut its budget by 30 percent.

In Miami, hot meals are being eliminated on some days to save money, and cold and frozen meals will be substituted.

The cuts are being made in response to a $7.4 million Oklahoma budget shortfall, according to Rick Teal, executive director of the regional senior nutrition program that serves hundreds of meals to seniors in Ottawa, Delaware and Craig counties.

Teal said meals provided to seniors at the Commerce Housing Authority will be eliminated altogether. Fifty-eight people regularly use that site, according Ramona Middleton, site director. Meals delivered to six homebound Commerce residents through the program also will be eliminated.

June Lewis, a Commerce resident, said she has met with her friends every weekday at the site for several years. She said Thursday that the decision to suspend meal services is going to leave many senior citizens resentful.

“This is a community of people,” Lewis said. “This is not just about food. … We are family. We will resent this.”

Lewis knotted the handles of the plastic bag containing her lunch of cornbread, beans, greens and dessert that she planned to carry home. She said the hot meal often becomes her evening meal on days when she eats a late breakfast.

Middleton said seniors are “terribly upset” about the cutback, and she hopes the cuts will be temporary.

On Oct. 30, the program will distribute its last meal in Commerce. Middleton also will be out of a job; she, too, is a casualty of budget cuts.

Teal said officials decided to close a central kitchen at the Miami Senior Center, and meals for Ottawa County seniors will now be prepared in Grove and taken to Miami.

“There is a domino effect,” Teal said. “Our budget was cut, so we had to move our central kitchen from Miami to Grove. As a result, the senior center loses rent money, and its services are affected. In addition, we have to operate from a smaller kitchen. Therefore, we don’t have the capacity to serve the people we served before. That is why Commerce is going to suffer.”

“I think it is garbage,” said Alma Knapp, a senior in Commerce who helps prepare meals. “This is the only outlet that some of us have. Not all of us have family.”

Teal said other areas affected by the cuts include Jay, where hot meal delivery will be reduced from twice a week to once a week. Residents of Burroughs Manor in Vinita, who have received five hot meals a week, will now receive hot meals on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. Frozen meals will be served on the other days.

The frozen meals are funded by a separate federal program that is not affected by cuts in state appropriations, Teal said.

Miami seniors who receive meals on weekdays at the Nine Tribes Towers will be provided hot meals on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, and frozen meals on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Teal said he hopes the services will return when the state’s budget crisis is over.

“I have never seen it this bad,” he said. “Thirty percent of our budget is about $116,000.”

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