The future of Moose Jaw’s two seniors organizations is the subject of a town hall meeting April 28.
Both organizations – Moose Jaw and District Seniors and Cosmo Seniors – face a bleak future.
Money, or lack of it, is the issue.
“We’re going to be about $40,000 short this year,” said Moose Jaw and District Seniors director Elaine Parsons. “We took in $357,000 revenues this year.”
The group, operating the Timothy Eaton Centre, has been subsidizing annual losses for years from a $177,000 reserve it had built up.
“We’ve almost depleted it. Do we really want to lose this place?”
In meetings with counterparts at Cosmo Centre, Parsons discovered that group isn’t much better off.
“They took out a loan to replace the roof. Now the roof on the other part of the building is leaking. They’re not sure if they can make it.”
When Moose Jaw and District Seniors took over the main floor of Timothy Eaton Centre in 1989 the province funded it with $47,000 a year.
To have the same purchasing power now would require about $80,000 in grants.
“In 1993 we lost all our provincial funding. They said they had to do it to balance the budget.”
This year the two seniors’ organizations will share a $26,900 Sask. Lottery trust grant prorated on membership.
Qualifying for grants is difficult. Virtually all are based on specific programs. Hardly any will fund operating expenses.
“This meeting is to find out what seniors want, get some ideas and we will go from there.”
Anyone aged 50 years and over is invited to attend the meeting at 2 p.m. Sunday, April 28 at the Cosmo Centre.
“I think it’s ridiculous that we have only 500 members in Moose Jaw seniors’ groups” out of about 8,000 eligible.
Parsons said discussions with service clubs and other groups show not a lot is understood about the seniors’ groups.
“So many people don’t know we have a cafe at Timothy that is open to the public.”
Moose Jaw and District Seniors rents space and shares maintenance with Moose Jaw Housing which has 26 seniors’ apartments on the top floor.
In recent years, the organization’s extra expenses included flooding in the basement fitness centre, access issues as the front was blocked for months by water line repairs, and expensive building repair work.
Loss of the heart health program after flooding also hurt finances.
Cosmo owns its building and offers many of the same programs as at Timothy Centre.
Ron Walter can be reached at [email protected]
