GIRARD Speaker urges passage of levy to benefit seniors

State and federal funding for senior services is being reduced annually, the speaker said.
By PETER H. MILLIKEN
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
GIRARD -- The outlook for Trumbull County's senior citizens programs is bleak if a new 1-mill, five-year senior services levy fails March 2, says an official of the agency on aging.
"If seniors do not get this, I hate to see what's going to happen in five or six years," said Martin J. O'Connell, a trustee of the District XI Area Agency on Aging. The four-county agency coordinates services for senior citizens. "Seniors suffer if this doesn't pass," he said.
"People are going to have to pay for the senior programs, and it's not going to continue to come in from the federal government," he said. The federal and state governments are cutting funding annually, he added.
Spoke to public
O'Connell spoke at a public forum on the levy Tuesday at the Girard Multi-Generational Center, where he is chairman of the board of directors. The Youngstown-based area agency serves Ashtabula, Trumbull, Mahoning and Coumbiana counties. It spent $18 million in the four counties combined last year.
The agency is campaigning for new 1-mill, five-year levies for services to people over 60 on the primary ballot in Trumbull and Mahoning counties. The levies are expected to generate about $3.4 million annually in Trumbull County and $3.8 million in Mahoning County.
Uses for money
In both counties, the money would to be used for transportation, in-home services (including home-delivered meals), prescription assistance, guardianship and protective services and health, education and wellness. However, no specific spending plan has been devised.
The agency proposes having an advisory committee in each county rank funding needs in each category, with potential service providers bidding for contracts to spend the levy money on those services. The agency will monitor the spending, explained Deanna Clifford, the agency's director of community relations.
However, she said, the agency does not yet have an agreement with commissioners in each county concerning the process by which the local levy money is to be spent.
The Trumbull County levy will cost the owner of an $80,000 home an additional $25 a year in property taxes, Clifford said. She gave about the same figure for Mahoning County in a Youngstown presentation last week.
Barbara Klingensmith, executive director of the Country Neighbor Program, an Orwell-based senior service agency, said services to senior citizens in that rural area expanded significantly when a new 1-mill, five-year senior levy passed in March 2000.
Her agency, which serves southern Ashtabula County, was able to provide hot home-delivered meals for the first time to the southeastern part of the county after the levy passed. The agency was able to increase from three to eight home-delivered meal routes, averaging 40 miles round trip, and from about 10,000 to more than 30,000 meals a year, she said.
The agency went from offering almost no personal care to seven home health aides who now provide such care. She said the county's levy generates about $1.4 million a year.