Opinion: Cuts to senior meals unacceptable
Dear Supervisors,
Last week, the CAO proposed budget cuts to senior programs that we believe would have a grave, negative impact on the quality of life for the some of the most vulnerable citizens in our community.
Eliminating nutrition sites would increase the likelihood of inadequate or improper diet and would put seniors at an even greater risk of poor health. For some seniors, the meal they receive at the nutrition program is the only meal they will eat that day.
Senior nutrition sites offer more than just a healthy meal. Many seniors live alone and would live a life of isolation if not for the opportunity to come together with their peers over lunch. The value of this social contact should not be underestimated.
Attendance at the food program also gives the program coordinators and volunteers an opportunity to observe any signs of change or poor health in an individual. Staff can then engage the person of concern in appropriate resources prior to need for more extensive intervention.
Our seniors are greatly valued by all of us here on the South Shore, as they should be in the entire county, state and country. Please use your considerable power and unite to protect these treasured members of our community.
Sincerely,
David Kelly, chairman Tahoe Area Coordinating Council for the Disabled
Our senior nutrition program is especially important during the winter months, when some folks cannot even get to the grocery store to buy food. Feeding people should be a #1 priority and this program should not be cut.
Please, please, please…do NOT cut this very important program! Thank you David for your informative and insightful article.
Here’s another example of upper division directors & managers in government agencies putting their salaries above programs and services (just like City of SLT directors & City Manager gave themselves a 30% raise a couple of years ago). Instead of being about ‘service’ to community, county and state and keeping programs and frontline staffers out providing ‘service’, it has become about salary comparison surverys, paying outside consultants and hiring people from out of the area (because ‘they’ supposedly ‘know best’ – can you feel the sarcasim!?!?!).
Newly elected officials: for once look at cutting salaries from the top, instead of programs and frontline ‘service’ staffers. We need more jobs and less ‘highly paid’ executives.
A stark vision of a California that would sharply limit aid to some of its poorest and neediest citizens.
$83.4-billion plan would also freeze funding for local schools, further cut state workers’ pay and take away 60% of state money for local mental health programs.
State parks and higher education are among the few areas that proposal would spare.
There’s not enough funding to go around so something or someone group gets the end results.
If the food-stamps program were in turn made to spend like money, we have a thriving economy.
So food for thought ,the lodging association can give large sums cash to election officials but the poor go hungry.What’s really important to some is a joke to others.
The young aren’t thinking about who got them here.The Old are trying to understand what went wrong with the System ?
There is no excuse for this here in town with the money that spent here.
I consider myself an optimist and understand that belts need to be tightened, but not around the necks of the individuals who paved the way for the rest of us. Our seniors need this service; they need the meal, they need someone checking in on them to see if all is well, they need to be afforded the respect and care that they have earned. What kind of an example are we showing our kids when we don’t take care of our “grandparents” in the community?