Tim Hockett, Olympic Community Action Program’s executive director, is making sad visits to low-income senior nutrition programs.
While seniors ate discounted dinners Wednesday afternoon at the Port Angles Senior Center and Thursday at the Tri-Area Community Center, Hockett told them OlyCAP is cutting back on serving those very meals from five weekday afternoons a week to three a week, beginning the first week in August.
It hasn’t been decided which days weekday meals will be provided, Hockett said.
OlyCAP may later have to cut the total down to two days of providing dinner to needy seniors or may eliminate the service altogether if community and faith-based groups cannot fill the gap, Hockett said.
Can’t sustain service
“We can’t sustain what we have been able to do in the past,” he told about 35 seniors at the Port Angeles Senior Center on Wednesday as they dined on spinach salad, baked fish, potatoes au gratin, broccoli and cauliflower, and chocolate cake.
Seniors 60 and older are asked to pay a suggested donation of $3 to $5 for the meals, though the average individual contribution has fallen to $2.34, Hockett said.
The program has been hit hard by federal and state cuts, a loss of federal stimulus funding and higher food prices, losing nearly $20,000 from January through April, Hockett said.
That means OlyCAP will be able to serve fewer than 45,000 meals in Clallam and Jefferson counties this year compared with the more than 67,000 that were served in 2010, Hockett estimated.
The result: The meal site in Brinnon has closed, and the meals in Port Townsend will stop at the end of the month.
On Thursday, Hockett visited the Tri-Area Community Center in Chimacum at mealtime to announce cuts similar to those in Port Angeles — and the program’s possible demise — to the 25 to 30 seniors in attendance.
“We are doing everything we can to avoid that,” he said Thursday.
A Tri-Area community meeting will be held next week “to see if we can come up with a community solution for one of those days,” Hockett said.
As OlyCAP is doing in Brinnon, Port Townsend and Port Angeles, Hockett will try to coalesce a Tri-Area group of community leaders and faith-based organizations “to do some problem-solving and find a solution,” Hockett said.
Meals on Wheels
OlyCAP’s Meals on Wheels program, which delivers cooked food to home-bound seniors, will not be cut, Hockett added.
“If someone is having financial hardship, I want to know about it so we can help with some sort of voucher or something,” he told the Port Angeles group.
“It’s pretty horrible for me” to have to deliver the bad news, said Hockett, whose first job 22 years ago at the North Olympic Peninsula’s largest emergency aid organization was running the senior nutrition program.
“Government priorities have created a crunch,” he added. “All our programs are besieged and stretched.
“I’m heartsick, heartsick over this action, but I’m going to work hard to restore [the program] soon.”
Instead of family
The announcement of the cuts at the Port Angeles Senior Center brought one woman nearly to tears.
“Some of us don’t have family,” Pauline Wrobel, 64, told Hockett, adding she would miss the human connection that comes with breaking bread with others.
“I just really love coming here, and I know you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do,” said Wrobel, who said she has a learning disability.
“I’m going to pray that God will help you to find an answer to all this so we can have it back on.”
She said in a later interview that when the nutrition program shrinks, she will have to make meals for herself that will not be nearly as nutritious as the one she just finished.
“Sometimes, I don’t have enough money to buy the healthy foods I want to,” Wrobel said.
The meal program averages 30 to 40 participants a night, said Port Angeles Senior Center Director D Bellamente.
“The place is full for holiday meals, those kinds of things,” she said. “It goes up to 65 to 80.”
The funding crisis has given her “a heavy heart,” she said.
“I’m just hoping that we can find a way to make this work to continue to feed the elderly and disabled throughout the community.”
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Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-417-3536 or at paul.gottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
