Among the items discussed by the Holbrook City Council June 13 was concern for the community’s senior citizens.
The Holbrook Senior Citizens Center recently lost Northern Arizona Council of Governments (NACOG) funding that supports the Meals on Wheels Program, which provides lunches to senior citizens in their homes and allows for welfare visits to ensure their wellbeing.
City Manager Randy Sullivan said that it was his understanding that Mom’s Meals, another federally funded program, would take over and be delivering meals for seniors, but that welfare checks would only be done over the phone. The service involves FedEx dropping off frozen meals to those being served once every two weeks, with meals to cover that stretch of time.
The city employs a driver, who has been delivering the meals and providing welfare checks on the city’s elderly citizens. “For now we will keep that person on and do physical welfare checks, as well as some of the other deliveries that he does. It’s still kind of up in the air. The senior center may close and if that happens, then we would just take on the duties of assigning (him) the driving and working with NACOG on those numbers,” said Sullivan.
While located at the same site, the Holbrook Senior Center is not tied to the Holbrook Extended Care facility, which houses elderly people.
“As far as the building that the center is located in, if it should close the city only provides for maintenance and utilities, so it would be a savings to the city. But I don’t think it would be that drastic of a service drop-off if it does,” said Sullivan. It was noted that besides the delivered meals the center serves seven to eight meals at the center itself each day where seniors can provide a donation for the meal and that issue has not been addressed.
“We won’t be delivering meals, but I’d still like to see welfare checks. I think meals are important, but I think those welfare checks and the continuity of (the driver) on those welfare checks are important,” said Sullivan.
“Does he also take some of the seniors to their doctor’s appointments and grocery shopping?” asked Councilwoman Francie Payne.
Sullivan said he does and that he would like that to continue as well.
Vice Mayor Wade Carlisle noted that several years ago he had done a ride-a-long with the Holbrook Police Department where they responded to an elderly couple in need. He learned that the couple called every day for assistance.
“When that happened I spoke with the son who was there and referred him to the Area Agency on Aging for assistance, and that ended all the service calls to the police department. There’s money and there’s help out there as our folks and people age that will help them out. We just don’t do a very good job in Holbrook getting the information to the people that need it,” he said, adding that this is a good opportunity to help the police department and that the senior center driver can be notified when they get those calls so that he can provide that contact information to elderly people in need. “These folks just need help and we have resources,” said Carlisle.
City Clerk Cher Reyes said that she was concerned about the frozen microwaveable meals the seniors would receive and would like to see the city reach out to Holbrook School District officials to see if this is something that could be part of their meal planning.
“They serve 260 meals a day just with their summer program. I don’t see why they would have a problem picking up 32 meals and they probably have the ability to meet the new requirements for funding,” stated Reyes, adding that they could talk to Superintendent Dr. Robbie Koerperich about that for next year.
The Meals on Wheels program will discontinue July 1, at which time the Mom’s Meals program will begin.
