Senior centers across the Bluegrass State are now facing a budgetary shortfall that has many cutting programs and reducing meal delivery services that employees say do more than just keep enrollees fed.
During a recent Team Kentucky press conference, Gov. Andy Beshear detailed how the roughly $10 million shortfall came to be. He said that many centers’ meal delivery programs, which are funded by one of the 15 area development districts in the state, evolved during COVID-19 to support more enrollees. At the time, the funding to cover the growth in services was provided by the American Rescue Plan Act – the federal funding solution that aided local governments in addressing economic impacts of the pandemic.
Kentucky’s state legislature budgeted general funds for the senior meal programs after the pandemic. But, despite a historic $10 million appropriation per fiscal year in the current state budget, it wasn't enough to fund the programs. Unused ARPA money bridged the gap for feeding programs last year, but those are no longer available – and now, Beshear said centers will likely have to tighten their belts.
Casey Ellis, the executive director of the Kentucky Council of Area Development Districts, said each of the districts has been left to figure out how to manage the shortfall in their own way.
“Everybody is still working through exactly what they're going to do,” he said. “It is going to be very specific to the regions.”
In the Purchase Area Development District, which covers the westernmost counties in the state, senior centers will have to make due with a funding reduction that will cover just two days of meal deliveries instead of five. In the Pennyrile Area Development District, WKDZ reports that meal deliveries are going down to three days a week. Other development districts are expected to take different tacks, like reducing staffing, implementing meal waitlists or eliminating some programs altogether to cover the funding gap.
Ellis said the realization of the shortfall came after years of the state telling the districts to stop putting people on waitlists for meals at senior centers – a move that came during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The directive was clear: to continue to provide the service and to clear the wait list. And so we've done that until we can't anymore,” he said.
PADD executive director Jeremy Buchanan said this isn’t the first time the development districts have faced a shortfall like this.
“The edict is to not have a wait list … that's what we continued [to do]. And ‘What about the money?’ ‘We'll make sure the money's there.’ And to [the Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services’] credit … we would do projections, they would give us whatever each one of our areas needed and none of us ever ran out,” he said. “But we started into this fiscal year in July, and we were doing our projections, and we were allocating out our money, and … we all knew, based on the rate that we do per month, we're going to run out of money at what we're doing for home delivered meals in our area.”
Local senior centers say meal programs help ‘most vulnerable’
Leaders with senior centers in Paducah and Murray – both in the Purchase Area Development District – say the reduced funding they’ll get will only be enough to cover meal delivery offerings two days a week.
Sarah Walker, the executive director of the Paducah-McCracken County Senior Center, called the news – which she said the center got with just a week’s notice – “heartbreaking.”
“It's definitely been hard to hear and just figuring out how we're going to handle all of it. It's no small amount with the cost of food and staff and manpower,” Walker said.
“Meals on Wheels is more than a meal. It is someone that is delivering to this person five days a week. They're laying eyes on them, they're saying hi to them, they're smiling at them, they're checking on them. We're not just losing the funding for a meal, we're losing funding for connection.”
The funding gaps for the Paducah and Murray centers each total around $300,000.
The far western Kentucky programs both typically deliver around 250 meals a day, totalling north of 1,200 a week in both McCracken and Calloway counties. Following through on the recommended cut would see their meal deliveries reduced by more than half weekly. Both centers are also expected to make staffing reductions.
Dacia Barger serves as the executive director of the Murray-Calloway County Senior Center. She called the cuts a “worst-case scenario.”
“Meals on Wheels feeds the most vulnerable people in our community. These are people that do not drive. They live alone. They are not able to cook for themselves. They are the most feeble citizens in our community,” she said. “Just not even counting how important a nutritional meal is – the only hot meal that they'll receive each day comes from us. With the majority of our clients, we are the only person that they see.”
Barger said this funding shortfall also comes in the wake of a 60% reduction for Title IIIB programs – which support exercise, education and transportation programs at the center. Her center’s total shortfall comes to around $350,000.
She said that centers serving fewer people than hers may be forced to make more drastic decisions.
“We were already feeling the squeeze and tightening up things and we were overcoming that cut,” Barger said. “This is affecting all the senior centers in our area, some that are much smaller than ours, that they really don't know how they're going to survive with these cuts.”
Barger said that the relationships formed between senior center employees and their clients are a big part of the service they provide.
“We get really, really close to these people. We love the seniors in our community and we've proven that our programs do work,” she said. “We're going to do everything possible to keep them going.”
Retired Paducah resident Gloria Lambert said she worries about the other people her age who are losing regular access to meal deliveries going hungry and that she always looks forward to seeing her delivery driver each day.
“We just talk and everything. It really helps out. It’s one meal a day, but it really helps out. We just laugh and talk to each other. I really enjoy it,” she said.
The leaders of both senior centers are calling on concerned community members to reach out to state officials in the Cabinet for Health and Family Services to advocate on their behalf. Each senior center is also accepting food donations.
Districts turning to communities, lawmakers for help
Buchanan said many centers in the Purchase Area are looking to their surrounding communities for support.
“Most of them, but not all of them, are fundraising and looking at their reserves and seeing what type of resources or philanthropic, civic-minded agencies they have in their communities to see where they can bridge and fill that [need],” the PADD executive director said. “You can't solve a problem all at once. It's little bitty pieces.”
Moving forward, Ellis said he believes the state’s elected officials will work to fund the senior meals program.
“The legislators seem to be very distraught and upset that this is happening. Most feel that it could have been avoided had they gotten a correct budget request,” he said. “Every budget session is different and that'll be for them to decide.”
As for what a “correct” budget request would have been for the biennial budget that was finalized in 2024, Ellis said “it's not really that clear.” He added that the KCADD was not made aware of what the actual shortfall was last fiscal year – when the gap was covered by leftover ARPA funds. He did say that his group advocated for $9 million more than was ultimately received.
A statement from Kentucky’s Cabinet for Health and Family Services Thursday also indicated that the appropriation request for the development districts was lower than what the group needed. Officials said “no cuts” came from the state but that “instead the full amount budgeted has been nearly expended.”
The agency said that with the state facing a potential $300 million-plus shortfall “due in part to tariffs and their impact on the economy,” it expects the upcoming budget process to be “significantly more difficult than in the last several years.”
