Senior meals cut back by county

HARLEM VALLEY — While  news reports highlighting budget woes in local school districts and towns have been filling front pages for months, the effects of an economic downturn sometimes reach into areas that fly under the radar.

Effective at the beginning of this year, the county’s Office of the Aging was forced to address its own significant budgetary restraints, resulting in cuts to its Friendship Site lunch programs, which provide meals to senior citizens at a number of locations around the county.

But as of January, the Hyde Park site has closed completely, Office of the Aging Director John Beale confirmed, and for the remaining nine senior centers, eight (excluding the site in Poughkeepsie) will no longer be operating on Fridays.

The program has been running for about 25 years, and for the last 10 years has been open Monday through Friday.

“These are tough times,â€� Beale acknowledged during a telephone interview last week. He explained that while the department faced  similar problems last year, stimulus funding helped to cover the gap. This year, the Office of the Aging isn’t expecting stimulus money.

“It’s challenging, but we’re trying to be cautious,� Beale added. Gov. David Paterson’s recent budget proposal will put an additional burden on the department.

“It could affect long-term care services,� he explained. “If it’s like last year, the Legislature will put everything back in plus more, but I don’t know where they’ll get the money from.�

There are two Friendship Sites in the immediate area: in the Millerton Village Hall building and in the South Amenia Presbyterian Church. Beale estimated that 45 meals are portioned out to those service sites daily.

The nutrition service offers hot meals to those who attend the sites in person, as well as a delivery service that drops off meals at the homes of seniors who are unable to travel. Frozen meals are also available and are usually distributed on Friday to see seniors through the weekend. The number of meals offered by the county has not changed, Beale said, but Thursday’s deliveries will now include meals for Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

Beale reported that 650 hot meals are prepared each day for the entire county and then shipped off to the individual sites. He also said only 17 percent of those who participate in the program use it all five days in the week (there are no food services provided on weekends).

Stopping by the center in Millerton, the few gathered for lunch said that they attended at least four days a week before the program’s schedule was reduced. It’s an opportunity they all look forward to and take advantage of on a regular basis. And along with providing at-home service, the delivery program also acts as a safety checkup for elderly residents, they said.

“I think it’s the people who get home deliveries who will be affected,� said Marian Briggs, who along with her husband, Jim, visits the Millerton site daily.

The program, above all, is a great opportunity to socialize, Briggs said.

“I look forward to it every day,� she explained. “We often sit down and just talk. It’s a good, hot meal and well-balanced, too.�

“Plus it’s great because you don’t have to sit down and think, ‘What do we have for dinner?’� joked Bill Morrison, who is a regular along with his wife, Ruth. “Also, ‘Who’s going to do the dishes?’�

Brenda Maillet runs the Millerton center, which is open from approximately 11 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., Monday through Thursday, at the community room off the Millerton Village Hall. The lunch program is free, although donations are suggested. To get a meal, give Maillet 24 hours notice by calling 518-789-3081. The South Amenia program can be reached at 845-373-4305.

“We’re hoping that the impact [of closing on Fridays] is minimal,� Beale said. “My experience is that seniors seem to be very understanding.�

The director said that the plan is to eventually reinstate Friday meals, when the budget allows.

Until then, those who attend in Millerton acknowledged that with the economic problems in the state, everyone is going to have to make adjustments.

“I’m just thankful for the four days we do have,� said Briggs.

Latest News

South Kent School’s unofficial March reunion

Elmarko Jackson was named a 2023 McDonald’s All American in his senior year at South Kent School. He helped lead the Cardinals to a New England Prep School Athletic Conference (NEPSAC) AAA title victory and was recruited to play at the University of Kansas. This March he will play point guard for the Jayhawks when they enter the tournament as a No. 4 seed against (13) Samford University.

Riley Klein

SOUTH KENT — March Madness will feature seven former South Kent Cardinals who now play on Division 1 NCAA teams.

The top-tier high school basketball program will be well represented with graduates from each of the past three years heading to “The Big Dance.”

Keep ReadingShow less
Hotchkiss grads dancing with Yale

Nick Townsend helped Yale win the Ivy League.

Screenshot from ESPN+ Broadcast

LAKEVILLE — Yale University advanced to the NCAA men’s basketball tournament after a buzzer-beater win over Brown University in the Ivy League championship game Sunday, March 17.

On Yale’s roster this year are two graduates of The Hotchkiss School: Nick Townsend, class of ‘22, and Jack Molloy, class of ‘21. Townsend wears No. 42 and Molloy wears No. 33.

Keep ReadingShow less
Handbells of St. Andrew’s to ring out Easter morning

Anne Everett and Bonnie Rosborough wait their turn to sound notes as bell ringers practicing to take part in the Easter morning service at St. Andrew’s Church.

Kathryn Boughton

KENT—There will be a joyful noise in St. Andrew’s Church Easter morning when a set of handbells donated to the church some 40 years ago are used for the first time by a choir currently rehearsing with music director Susan Guse.

Guse said that the church got the valuable three-octave set when Harlem Valley Psychiatric Center closed in the late 1980s and the bells were donated to the church. “The center used the bells for music therapy for younger patients. Our priest then was chaplain there and when the center closed, he brought the bells here,” she explained.

Keep ReadingShow less
Picasso’s American debut was a financial flop
Picasso’s American debut was a financial flop
Penguin Random House

‘Picasso’s War” by Foreign Affairs senior editor Hugh Eakin, who has written about the art world for publications like The New York Review of Books, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and The New York Times, is not about Pablo Picasso’s time in Nazi-occupied Paris and being harassed by the Gestapo, nor about his 1937 oil painting “Guernica,” in response to the aerial bombing of civilians in the Basque town during the Spanish Civil War.

Instead, the Penguin Random House book’s subtitle makes a clearer statement of intent: “How Modern Art Came To America.” This war was not between military forces but a cultural war combating America’s distaste for the emerging modernism that had flourished in Europe in the early decades of the 20th century.

Keep ReadingShow less