County Allocates Funds for Seniors : Supervisors Run Short of Cash to Fulfill All Requests

With the demand for funds far outstripping the supply, the Board of Supervisors began parceling out money and disappointment Tuesday to senior citizens’ groups seeking cash to build new facilities or improve old ones.

“We have a desperate need for a senior center in the City of Stanton,” Mary Gonye, a Stanton official, told the supervisors. And one senior citizen said the city now uses a 30-year-old renovated roller-skating rink with a kitchen that’s a “sweatbox,” plumbing that leaks and lights that go out constantly.

“We need your help to make our seniors’ dreams come true,” Gonye said.

Stanton Request Rejected

But faced with requests for $11.7 million in funds and only $3.3 million in available cash, the supervisors rejected Gonye’s request, despite the presence of 30 Stanton senior citizens, some of whom held up signs reading, “Stanton has no seniors’ center.”

More than 200 senior citizens from across the county packed the hearing room.

The board postponed until next Tuesday its vote on which projects to recommend for funds, which will be disbursed by the California Department of Aging. Voters last November approved spending $50 million statewide on senior centers.

Because of the clamor for money, an eight-member advisory committee representing community groups and county agencies set a ceiling of $450,000 for any one group.

Official Cites Example

A member of the advisory group, Dick Fisher, senior vice president of United Way of Orange County, said that when his organization chose which 10 of 24 groups applying would get money, priority was given to those that serve low-income, minority-group and ethnic-group seniors.

“We couldn’t give everybody everything,” Fisher said.

But Cynthia Cave, a Santa Ana official asking for $900,000 for a new center for senior citizens, told the board that her city has the largest minority population of any city in the county and has 22,000 senior citizens.

Supervisor Roger Stanton, whose district includes Santa Ana, told Cave that her city had “one of the very few projects in the entire county that’s getting the maximum amount” of $450,000. If Santa Ana didn’t want the money, he said, the City of Stanton would be happy to take it.

Supervisor Voices Criticism

“I don’t think you’ve been straightforward in communicating to the citizens of Santa Ana” that the city was getting the maximum available, Stanton said.

The Vietnamese Community of Orange County, an organization based in Santa Ana, also is expected to received $450,000.

Bill Nguyen, executive director of the group, said the county’s Asian population has tripled in the last 10 years, largely because of new immigrants.

“The most urgent need for the Asian seniors is for a place of their own” where they can meet with friends of similar background, Nguyen said.

Number of Senior Citizens

Gonye of Stanton said her city has 4,479 senior citizens, 19% of the total population, and that one-quarter of them have incomes below the poverty line, according to the 1980 federal census.

She said that if the board sticks to the advisory group’s recommendations next week--and the supervisors indicated that they would--she would appeal to the state for funds.

Other senior groups tentatively set to receive funds are: Fullerton, $150,000; Oso Viejo, $450,000; Nueva Esperanza Inc., $406,550; Orange Elderly Services, $450,000; Midway City Community Organization, $37,657; Westminster, $450,000, and Tustin, $265,682.