HUNTINGTON BEACH : Seniors Center Will Expand Meal Service

Despite the protests of more than 100 senior citizens, the city is expanding the meal program at its downtown senior citizens center to compensate for the recent discontinuation of meal services at another site.

Because of financial cutbacks by Feedback Foundation Inc., the meal program serving 35 low-income seniors at the Warner Baptist Church was canceled Aug. 31. The program at the church, on Warner Avenue at Gothard Street, was one of four Orange County programs that Feedback has been forced to discontinue in recent months.

The City Council this week agreed to begin serving those seniors by expanding the program at the Michael E. Rodgers Senior Citizens Center, which now serves low-cost meals to about 100 seniors.

To accommodate the new seniors that will be coming to the center, several existing programs at Rodgers have been rescheduled--to the dismay of many of the center’s current members.

More than 100 seniors at the center signed a petition protesting the meal-program consolidation, mainly because they were not notified about the scheduling changes.

“We’re supportive of the Feedback Foundation, but this is disrupting a lot of seniors down there,” said Clancy Yoder, a member of the Council on Aging advisory committee. “The main thing is . . . you just don’t kick these seniors around without consulting them.”

Yoder said he is also concerned that the new program will be serving seniors from other cities, perhaps overburdening the city’s services for seniors.

However, Jim Engle, the city’s acting community services director, said he believes that centralizing the program will be “a boon” to the city’s meal services and other senior programs. “Other seniors will now have these programs at the Rodgers center readily available to them,” he said.

Expanding the center’s meal program will cost between $7,700 and $8,000, which will be “easily covered” by Council on Aging funds and a county grant, Engle said.