Man lists contributions to Austintown Senior Center

Austintown Township Trustee Jim Davis referred to me by name in a Vindicator article and asked: “What did you provide?” to the Austintown Senior Center. Jim, I’m glad you asked. I provided one free year of my time, money and effort from the day I brought the idea for a center to former Trustee Lisa Oles.

I developed the original plan for the center, chaired the first public meeting, researched and printed 20 pages of handouts about other Ohio senior centers, developed a nonprofit named Austintown Generational Enrichment Inc. to start a senior center and served as its first president, paid my own way while traveling to Columbus for the state senior center convention to research how to start up a center, visited and talked with staff in other counties, gained a free van for transportation to and from the Austintown center and for day trips, gained 50 free daily hot lunches from a federal meal program for the senior center, obtained $15,000 in free staffing for the center through a federal senior employment program, worked for one month every day as an unpaid senior center director, helping with meals and activities, working to secure computer training, cleaning the center, taking out the trash, promoting the center via the TV show “Senior Focus” I hosted on Channel 19, also as a volunteer.

Finally, I also provided Austintown with an additional tenant at the Westchester building by contacting the Mahoning County Board of Health adult day care program which had been housed in the run-down South Side Annex building. Its subsequent move brought in thousands of dollars in additional revenue for the township.

So let me ask you, “what did you provide?” You provided a $25,000 van purchased out of senior levy funds to replace the free van service I had obtained. You invested thousands of dollars into the senior center kitchen so seniors could pay $3 to $5 a day for lunch. This replaced the free daily lunch program I had gained for the township. You took nearly half of the senior levy money designated as solely for senior services and put it into a fund often used for non-senior spending.

This whole mess could be straightened out if the trustees would simply take the actual costs of the senior center’s use of the Westchester building out of senior levy funds rather than the huge amount of rent. Since the rent collected for the building is about double what the actual building costs are, the senior center’s building costs should run about $70,000 per year rather than the $140,000 being charged as rent. Taking this $70,000 amount from senior levy funds is fair and would free up an additional $70,000 per year for actual senior services.

Bill Adams, Austintown