Ride Expense Chewing Up Senior Meal System’s Cash : Funding: Officials seem sure they will find a solution. Many elderly residents rely on the county program for food and social interaction.

Josh Meyer is one of hundreds of senior citizens from Thousand Oaks to Ojai who rely on the county’s Senior Nutrition Program for both food and conversation.

Four or five times each week, the Camarillo resident visits a local meal site--one of a dozen in the county--sponsored by the nutrition program.

Eye problems forced the retired veterinarian to give up driving. So to reach the center, Meyer rides a bus provided by the nutrition program. Meyer, who also suffers from cancer, has come to depend on both the meals and the ride, he told the county’s transportation commission Friday.

“If it weren’t for this hot meal program, I don’t know that I would have made it,” he said.

But the nutrition program is running short of cash. Funding has shrunk, while expenses, especially for transportation, have grown, program administrator Violet Henry said.

So the transportation commission on Friday set aside, but did not yet approve, $152,910 in local transit funds to help pay to transport such seniors as Meyer to nutrition centers.

Commissioners will discuss the nutrition program’s transportation needs at their July meeting and may then decide whether to allocate the funding.

The nutrition program has about seven mini-buses and vans--as well as one full-sized passenger bus--to carry seniors to meal sites throughout the county, Henry said. About 500 people have used the transportation system during the last year.

The same vehicles also deliver hot meals to homebound seniors.

Much of the nutrition program’s $1.5-million budget has traditionally come from federal government grant money, Henry said. But the amount received from grants has slipped over the years. To make up the difference, she said, the program has dipped into a trust fund, established with donations, that is now almost depleted. The fund used to hold $300,000; it is now below $100,000.

As a result, the program has scaled back the number of days it provides transportation in some communities. In Oxnard, for example, van or bus service was cut from five days a week to three.

If funds keep dwindling, Henry said, the program will have to cut transportation even further.

“It’s reached a crisis,” she said. “If something’s not done this year, then next year it will have to be severely cut or eliminated.”

Transportation service to and from the meal sites will not very likely disappear. Commissioners said it would continue either through the present system, through a new arrangement in which individual cities might assume responsibility for transportation or through reliance on private companies.

The commission will consider these options at its July meeting, said county Supervisor John K. Flynn, who is also a member of the commission.

Flynn said he didn’t oppose the idea of using private transportation companies to ferry seniors to the meal sites. But first, he said, he wanted to see if the existing system could still work. “We have so many transportation systems,” he said, “we must have a way to get people there with the current system.”

County Supervisor Susan Lacey, also a member of the commission, said she recognized the importance of the service to those who rely on it. For some seniors, she said, lunch at one of the program’s centers may be their only excursion for the day.

“It’s not the food, it’s the socialization,” she said. “They need this. . . . It’s a question of them living or not.”