Fort Bragg senior center leads charge to put funding back- Mendocino Voice article

MENDOCINO CO., CA., 2/21/25 — Even with a microphone, Redwood Coast Seniors Executive Director Jill Rexrode would have had trouble getting her message heard over the cacophony of the daily lunch. Every table in Fort Bragg’s senior center dining room was filled. Lunchers enjoyed meatloaf, green salad, potatoes, and veggies. Volunteers and staff bussed carts burgeoning with cold and hot drinks and desserts. Everywhere the delicious aromas, storytelling, laughter, and clinking of crockery created a din that partly drowned out the piano player in the front. Rexrode needed to talk to the crowd and ask them to write letters and make phone calls about looming cuts to federal funding of these lunches, so she got the piano player to take a break and stood next to the American flag with a microphone and called for attention. Some went silent.

“I really need to talk to you to get your help in getting the Older Americans Act renewed,” Rexrode said. She asked those enjoying the meatloaf, the most popular lunch every week, to take a brochure provided at the door and write and call “all of those” on a long list of politicians and nonprofit groups. She asked the roomful to each send the message to get Congress to return funding used nationwide for senior nutrition.

“Please do this so we can continue to provide our lunches and Meals on Wheels here,” Rexrode said.

A looming federal funding crisis for the Area Agency on Aging of Lake & Mendocino Counties (AAA) could upend the budgets of all the senior centers in Lake County and three in Mendocino County, but only Fort Bragg’s Redwood Coast Seniors has chosen to make a fuss after the AAA alerted all its client senior centers that trouble was brewing.

Redwood Coast Seniors got $268,000 in federal money last year through AAA, Rexrode said. This provides much of the cost of one of the county’s largest Meals on Wheels and senior center dining programs.

Willits and Ukiah senior centers don’t get the federal feeding funds but are dealing with a separate issue, cuts to their outreach programs by Mendocino County. All the senior centers said the current uncertainty and talk of federal cuts is taxing an already thin line in two counties with poverty rates about 20 percent above the statewide average.

The noisy brouhaha coming from the Mendocino Coast has involved dozens of people calling a long list of state, local, federal and elderly activist groups. The call content shows up on local radio, news sites, billboards and social media, but pretty much only in Fort Bragg. The AAA says it’s a problem that does need action and has gotten local political help in fixing it. But many of those being called say they can’t fix the problem in the way callers from Fort Bragg are asking.

Understanding the problem that created the activism involves untangling a Gordian knot of partisan politics. Rexrode, like Alexander the Great, cut to the point instead.

“All of that is moot right now. We don’t want ‘he said, she said.’ Who gives a flip about that at this point? The point is we have to work together to renew the Older Americans Act, or thousands of seniors will go hungry.”

Zo Abell, on the Redwood Coast Seniors board at the senior center put it like this: “Support has always been and remains bi-partisan.” 

While no payments have stopped yet, a little fix right now could prevent a crash by March, Rexrode said.

Omission of Older Americans Act funds

A December federal budget showdown led to a continuing resolution in place of approving a new budget. The Senate’s version of the continuing resolution included a funded Older Americans Act (OAA). But the version that passed the U.S. House of Representatives failed to include the OAA. There is widespread partisan debate about who is to blame for the omission or exclusion but for now, funding continues to flow based on the old budget.

There has also been some misinformation that President Donald Trump caused the problem when in fact it happened in December, while Joe Biden was still president. 

Yet whoever is to blame, the intentional or unintentional omission has created a situation where an appropriation that could have been put to bed for five years now is vulnerable to a new federal budget where Trump and both houses of Congress will have to sign off. 

The approach being pushed in Fort Bragg might not be the solution, other advocates for seniors say.

When advocacy groups and representatives on the list provided to seniors and the community in Fort Bragg were contacted they said the funding was continuing to flow at last year’s levels. While they praised Rexrode for bringing the matter to light, they did not feel there was any action that could be taken outside the continuing budget process. 

Redwood Coast Seniors prepared 55,000 meals last year, served to seniors in the lunchroom or the grab-and-go program or Meals on Wheels. The Anderson Valley Senior Center serves lunch two days a week. Coastal Seniors in Point Arena  also gets federal funds through the Area Agency on Aging for Mendocino and Lake Counties. 

Senior centers in Willits and Ukiah do not get the federal funds and are thus not impacted.

Ukiah Senior Center Executive Director Liz Dorsey said the Meals on Wheels program there is conducted by Plowshares, a Ukiah nonprofit that serves the homeless. Dorsey said Ukiah serves about 6,000 lunches per year.

“A large part of the problem is the fear of what might or might not happen. Senior centers are not funded as well as maybe they should be,” Dorsey said.

“We have always operated with uncertainty. But with these fears that people are experiencing right now, with everything in our society in flux, those who have been so generous in the past are potentially less likely to donate. Today I talked to about six or eight businesses, and across the board, I’m hearing ‘I am being slammed right now with donation requests.’”

Richard Baker, executive director of the Willits Senior Center said they serve about 21,000 meals per year, half in hall and drive up and half Meals on Wheels. 

“Every senior center is run differently. We have a thrift store that generates probably about $330,000 a year. So right now, we have not had to reach out and seek federal funding,” Baker said.

“I could have applied for AAA funds and probably got money there. But why do that when other agencies depend on that money? It’s a pool of money, and if we get into it the pool has less to offer the others,” Baker said.

While Trump may not have created the current crisis, he has advocated for across-the-board cuts to social services, including recommending a cut of 25 percent to food stamp programs. The directors say all of this has added much anxiety to those overseeing thin budgets.

The Mendocino County senior centers all also face county cuts in the $25,000-$50,000 range to outreach programs. Those cuts came during the county’s budget process and will take effect July 1. The directors said they were working to raise that money but faced headwinds of uncertainty.

Lake County Social Services Director Rachael Dillman Parsons described what happened that led to this in a presentation to the board last week. The AAA is integrated into Lake County’s social services department, and all five Lake County senior centers depend on the imperiled federal funding for their meal programs.

California’s population made it one of the youngest states in the 1970 census, but the average age has been getting older since. 

And the population is aging quickly in Mendocino and Lake Counties. 

Census figures show that in 2022, 23.9 percent of Lake County’s population was 65 and older, up from 17.8 percent in 2010 In 2022; 24.6 percent of Mendocino County’s population was 65 and older in 2022, up from 15.5 percent in 2010, census figures show.

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