Rollercoaster ride soon coming to the end

The past one and a half years has been a big challenge for the Woods County Senior Citizens and the Nutrition Center. Besides Covid and the lockdown of our congregate site for many months and all the other restriction we still have to follow such as no game room, social distancing, etc., we also have to battle with money and building issues.

One of the biggest challenges is, for sure, the underfunded Title III Senior Nutrition Program. Using the population as first key for grants causes us around here to lose lots of grant money. We, in the northwestern Oklahoma counties, have the same costs for our meal sites as the others but with the population as first part of the key we are not receiving as much money as we need. That is why Panhandle Nutrition, Wheatheart and now CADC had to put their termination in, as they can’t continue the same way over and over without going broke.

We are very thankful for the past two years having CADC here and serving our community and using their own funds to keep our service going. We are also very thankful for Meals on Wheels of Metro Tulsa taking on this new adventure and willing to serve our community. Meals on Wheels of Metro Tulsa with Calvin Moore, president and CEO, and Mark Bloomingdale, vice president and COO, and their team are excited to work for our seniors and so are we.

At least the week of Sept. 13-17, the Senior Citizen and Nutrition Center in Alva will stay closed as we have to go through health inspection to get new licensing for our new grantees. Besides that, all the staff needs to be reemployed and other contracts need to be changed.

All of this takes a little bit of time. Our seniors will be not out of food in this time. Everyone received a box with shelf-stable meals for the next week and will get more delivered if it takes longer than just this one week to get things settled.

We are also very blessed to live in a giving and loving community. Over the past months many individuals, families and businesses have donated money to us so we can keep our numbers up and nobody from the current crowd has to be left out. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts!

Also, a big thank you to our Woods County Commissioners Randy McMurphy, David Hamil and John Smiley who are always looking out for us and make sure we have a building to serve our community. We are looking forward to what the future will bring on that.