Funding cuts place senior meal service in Eastport at risk

At the end of December the Eastport Senior Center will be without a manager to coordinate the Community Café and other Eastern Area Agency on Aging (EAAA) services for seniors. After 10 years at the helm, Persis Mooers is retiring. "I'm retiring for my own health," she says. EAAA will not be replacing Mooers with a paid staff person but instead is seeking a volunteer to take over.
The center operates on a slim budget of $7,000 per year, and Mooers notes that her part‑time position was funded by EAAA, not the center. Staff funding has disappeared as federal and state support for EAAA programs has been cut back, says EAAA Director of Nutrition Services Robert Crone. "Persis has done a stellar job," he says. "She's stuck with it through thick and thin, and right now things are pretty thin."
EAAA Director of Communications Carol Higgins‑Taylor adds, "She's got a good heart and a lot of dedication. We're sad to see her go." Mooers' substitute, Peggy (Bates) Gilman, also will be retiring the end of December.
Crone explains that his agency has had to shut down 11 Community Cafés. "We've had a long relationship with Eastport, and we'd like it to continue." However, he says that the current café service of providing three meals a week is not sustainable with the number of seniors that are using the on‑site lunch program. "The numbers are pretty sketchy," he says. While Wednesdays generally pull in 16 or 17 people, Mondays and Fridays only draw from one or two to seven, according to Crone. Home‑bound seniors who participate in the Meals on Wheels program will not be affected by any changes at the senior center.
Most of the Community Café sites are run by volunteer staff, Crone explains. "The bottom line is we need to find a volunteer, or we won't be able to run that [Eastport] site." Because of the low numbers on Mondays and Fridays, the lunch program would probably be cut back to Wednesdays only, so a volunteer would work one day a week to take reservations and complete paperwork on meal counts, heat the meals, coordinate any EAAA programming, work with other volunteers to serve the meals and clean up. "A volunteer even a day a week -- that would keep the center open -- and we really need it," Mooers says. A volunteer is needed by the end of December.
EAAA also pays the senior center a rental fee of $10 per meal day, presently $30 per week. Mooers notes that this has been a critical income stream for the senior center, totaling about $1,500 for the year. Many of the places EAAA uses for the cafés do not cost the agency any rental fee. She is not sure if the senior center will survive if that rental stream is cut to $10 a week or to no rental fee at all. "We don't want to lose the senior center. We really need this. If they don't serve meals here I don't know what they will do."
The City of Eastport contributes $3,500 a year to the center's $7,000 budget and owns the building. The senior center pays all utility, heat and upkeep bills.
Presently the meals for the Community Café and the Meals on Wheels program are stored at the Eastport Elementary School and are reheated at the senior center for the café lunches. If the senior center were to no longer be the site for the café, Crone notes that many of their cafés are located in churches or community centers.
"Greenville is a good model of how this program is going to survive." He explains that different civic groups, including the fire department, have stepped forward to fund the difference in costs, as well as providing gas cards to be used to bring seniors to the site and gift certificates for meals. "Almost every business in town contributed in some way to the holiday meals."
Lubec also provides another example of community members working to find solutions to the funding gap. "The woman who runs Sunrise Apartments gives us the location for free, and she found the funding for the site manager," says Crone. Higgins‑Taylor adds, "Grassroots effort is what it takes." She comments that EAAA is as concerned about the cessation of their programs as seniors in Eastport.
"We've enjoyed so much fun and fellowship here. We can't lose it," Mooers says of the senior center. She has no intention of pulling up on her commitment to the center after she retires. "We have a lot of work to do, but we'll wait until January. We're waiting to see what EAAA is going to do."
For more information about volunteering at the Eastport Senior Center and Community Café contact EAAA Area Manager for Washington County Lori Diadone at 454‑2215 or email <ldiadone@eaaa.com>.