Meals On Wheels Faces Funding Shortfall

Providers for the area’s Meals on Wheels senior citizen nutrition program are facing a funding shortfall this year.

The East Texas Council of Governments (ETCOG) has allocated about $2.025 million among four subcontractors that provide meals throughout 14 counties, including Van Zandt.

That is actually a funding increase compared to the $1.798 million given in fiscal year 2008, but is $229,849 less than the group of subcontractors requested.

Mike Powell is the executive director for Meals on Wheels Ministry Inc. in Tyler, the program provider for Van Zandt and five other East Texas counties. For now, he said, the program is not looking at cutting service or reducing its number of clients.

"We want to try to raise the money needed to offset the (potential) cutback. We don’t want to have to effectively change the number of clients we are currently serving," Powell said.

At a meeting Monday at ETCOG headquarters in Kilgore, the four providers agreed to distribute the requested funding shortfall by equally sharing it among three of the providers.

Meals on Wheels Ministries Inc. wound up taking a requested budget shortfall of about $90,000.

"In this economy, that could be difficult, but we will have to try to raise about $500,000 instead of $400,000," Powell said in reference to funds raised last fiscal year.

The fourth provider, Northeast Texas Opportunities Inc., serves Rains County only and received funding based on actual expenses for the five months they have provided services.

Compounding the problem is that the program providers were already two months into the current contract before being notified that their requested funding could not be met.

"My best answer right now is we can’t say how it will affect us," Powell said. "The primary problem is our contract started October 1 and we were basically anticipating this level of funding.

"Now, the state has come back and told us they can’t provide what we negotiated on," he added.

A call to ETCOG Director of Aging Claude Andrews was not immediately returned. In a press release this week, ETCOG Executive Director David Cleveland remained hopeful no service cutback would be necessary.

"By working in a collaborative manner with all of our nutrition subcontractors, I am confident that we will not only be able to address the projected funding shortfall but also continue to provide meals for those seniors who are most in need while strengthening the program over time," Cleveland stated.

Powell said the radical drop in gasoline prices since the contracts were negotiated in August will help offset a small part of the shortfall.

"Since we were negotiating the contracts in August, fuel prices are quite obviously half of what they were…That will help us partially because we have to get meals from our central kitchen to the communities we serve," he said.

Volunteers, who do not receive any mileage reimbursement, pick up the meals each Monday through Friday at the respective delivery points in each community and take them to clients.

Currently, there are Meals on Wheels sites in Canton, Grand Saline, Van and Wills Point. Bob Summitt, the site director for Meals on Wheels in Canton, said he currently orders 70 meals per day.

Powell said almost 42,000 meals went out to clients in Van Zandt County during the fiscal year between Sept. 1, 2007, and Aug. 31, 2008.

He said he hopes fundraising efforts in those communities will ensure those senior citizens who need a nutritious meal each weekday will be able to get one.

"People in the communities can help us feed their neighbors and that is what the program is about," Powell said.