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“Please continue the wonderful work. While my mother was alive, she had nothing but good things to say about your employees and the services you provide. Thanks for caring for her so well!” ~Child of a client “The meals we received were very much appreciated by my husband and I. It gave me more time to take care of him and be with him. The folks who delivered them were always warm and friendly, and the meals were hot and very filling.” ~A Meals on Wheels client
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Download and print these Frequently Asked Questions. Don't see your question below? Email us. Why
are you having a special election in the summer? Q. Why are you having a special election in the summer? A. We want our voice to be heard. We fear that with all the attention on the Presidential election and other hotly contested local races the Senior Services levy will be forgotten. Everyone’s mail box will be filled this fall with campaign literature and we can not compete with all the money that will be spent by others to get the attention of voters.
Q. Why not wait until 2009 to be on the ballot? A. The current operating levy expired this year, and in order to receive any funding next year this new levy must be approved during 2008.
A. If approved, the levy will cost an additional $9.95 per $100,000 of property valuation.
A. Levy funds support about everything that the Council for Older Adults is able to do. Levy funds make up more than 80 percent of our budget, and the availability of these funds allows us to attract other funding from state, federal and private sources. The service priority of the Council for Older Adults has always been serving the most frail and vulnerable older adults in our community. Our focus is to assist people to remain living in their own home with independence and dignity with services such as: meals on wheels, personal care, adult day care, medical transportation, homemaking, emergency response systems and much more. Q. Is the levy needed to support your new building? A. A very small portion of our budget is used to support the operation of the new facility. We are on the ballot now because, by state law, senior services levies can only last for five years. Our current operating levy was passed in 2003 and expires this year. We are on the ballot so we can continue current services. Money from this levy will start coming to the Council in 2009. Q. Who is eligible for services? A. Everyone Delaware County resident age 60+ is eligible for services through the Council for Older Adults. The Activity Center at the Center for Older Adults allows people age 55 or above to enroll. The Council also has a grant from the United Way which enables us to serve Meals on Wheels to disabled adults under the age of 60, but no levy funds are used to serve those under the age of 60. Fees for services vary based on a client's ability to pay. Q. Who is your average client? A. Our average client who receives in-home services is a 79-year-old, widowed female who lives alone. The Council spends 84% of its levy funding on in-home services. Of course, we are now providing many services other than in-home services to many different older adults. The person attending the Activity Center will look very different than an older adult receiving in-home services. Others attending one of our dining centers, receiving prescription assistance, insurance counseling or benefiting from our farmers' market voucher program have very different characteristics and needs than our in-home service clients.
A. No! In Ohio, Senior Services levies can last no longer than five years. Q. What is your administrative cost? A. In 2006, our administrative cost was 11.6%. This is much lower than the average nonprofit organization. This percentage is projected to decrease during the next five years. Q. Why do you need more millage? A. Our local older population is growing very rapidly and this growth is expected to continue for some time. The bulk of levy funding is used to provide in-home care and as our population ages this need will increase. Additional funding is needed to help avoid placing local older adults in need of in-home care on waiting lists. A couple of our largest expenses are for food and transportation and both of these costs have increased much more rapidly than inflation, in general. Q. What will happen to the Park Avenue Center? A. The Council for Older Adults does not own this facility and has no control over what happens to the building in the future. Currently, the building serves as one of four congregate dining sites in the county and we delivery hot meals to the center five days a week. We plan to continue this dining center for as long as participation can be justified. A. Thus far, the Activity Center is averaging about 250 new enrolled members each month. Due to popular demand, new programs and activities are being added every week. For those who either don’t drive or who don’t want to drive, we have funded an expanded transportation service through D.A.T.A. which includes door-to-door service as well as routes that circle Delaware. The Park Avenue Center is one of the stops on these routes, and buses pick up and return individuals at the center several times each day. We are regularly evaluating and adjusting transportation to be as effective as possible. Q. Why did you build the new center so far from Delaware? A. First, the new Center is in the City of Delaware and less than 6 miles from the center of the city. The location was picked for several reasons. If we had chosen to build in Delaware it would have been very difficult to find the amount of vacant land that was needed, however, this was not our primary rationale for building further south. By working with the county auditor’s office we were able to determine that more older adults live within a radius of the Cheshire Rd site than within the same radius of the center of Delaware. Additionally, the Cheshire Rd. site is in a high growth, very visible location with new roads accessible to a large part of the county. Finally, given what has been paid for surrounding land, we got a great deal. A. Approximately $4.7 million. If this sounds like a lot of money, it is, but everything is relative. Nursing home costs now equal more than $50,000 a year. That means that 20 people can be served in nursing homes for $1 million and 100 people can be served for a year for $5 million. The Council for Older Adults will provide in-home care to more than 1,100 older Adults in 2008. In addition, we will serve thousands more with a variety of other community services. When you add everything up we can provide a lot more service to many more people with our local levy funding. It is a very efficient and effective use of our local tax money. Q. Why don’t you wait for a year or so until the economy improves before asking for more money? A. We would like to, but we have no choice. Our funding will run our at the end of 2008. If we were to wait until 2009 and if that levy passed, funding from that levy would not become available to us until 2010. We do not nearly have enough money to maintain services until 2010. A. The Council for Older Adults occupies less than 20 percent of the total space in the new facility. The majority of our staff is comprised of licensed social workers whose job it is to conduct in-home assessments and manage the care of nearly 750 older clients. This number of clients will continue to grow in the future. Additionally, the Council houses individuals who provide maintenance, IT and outreach support for the Senior Center. The Council’s administrative cost in 2006 was 11.6% Q. Why does it take so long for someone to shovel my sidewalk? A. When is snows, it usually snows on everyone and as a result those who need help with snow shoveling need help all at the same time. We prioritize our resources so that those receiving Meals on Wheels receive snow shoveling first. This helps our meal drivers get to the house more easily, especially in rural areas. We use a number of different means for snow shoveling including volunteers and we try our best to get to everyone who needs help as soon as possible. Unfortunately, sometimes this is not enough. |
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