Senior centers in Ohio struggle for funding

Associated Press

COLUMBUS

Senior centers in Ohio are struggling for funding as they face shrinking budgets and a rising demand for services from a growing population of older adults.

Some centers already have closed and others have an uncertain future, The Columbus Dispatch reported .

A southwest Ohio center recently closed because it was no longer financially sustainable, said Michael Turner, president of the Ohio Association of Senior Centers. He said the Clifton Senior Center in Cincinnati referred its seniors to other agencies after closing in September.

“If we’re not careful, these centers might not be around for much longer,” Turner said.

That’s what happened to adult day-centers in the state, he said. He said so many closed that the Ohio Association of Adult Day Services, which had operated since 1980, shut down at the end of 2009.

Most senior centers are nonprofit and rely on federal funding for a large portion of their budgets. Those funds have not increased despite higher costs of providing the services, and cuts in state aid also have hurt centers’ budgets, said Shon Gress, executive director of eastern Ohio’s Guernsey County Senior Center.

She said the demand for services has continued to grow, but funding has not kept pace. For example, the number of meals served by Meals on Wheels there annually has more than tripled over a decade from 37,000 in 2001 to 133,000 in 2010.

“We know that senior hunger is really growing throughout the nation,” Gress said.

Food programs are among a variety of services offered by the centers. In southeast Ohio, the Athens County Senior Center is the main provider of transportation for hundreds of senior citizens who have no other way to get around the rural county, said Turner, who runs the center.

The Reynoldsburg Senior Center in central Ohio has a full calendar for January, but its future is uncertain because of the risk that funding soon might run out. Member dues of $15 a year for city residents and $20 for nonresidents pay for most of the center’s programs and services.

The 1,800-member center gets about $166,000 annually from Reynoldsburg’s general fund to cover operating costs and staffing. But the city is facing a $1.3 million shortfall, and city officials are working with an interim budget that runs through April because voters rejected a third request for a city income-tax increase.