The last thing the Council on Aging expected this year was to get a full-time director, but if Annual Town Meeting voters approve the proposed fiscal 2010 omnibus budget on May 2, COA Director Ginger Quarles will have a full-time job starting July 1, up from her current 30 hours a week. The COA Board of Directors voted unanimously Monday night to spend $12,600 of the $14,832 budget increase approved by the selectmen last week to fund the additional hours for Quarles. The board delayed a decision on how best to use the remaining $2,232 until a subcommittee reports back on the subject next month. The remaining money could pay for more hours for the COA’s 15-hour-a-week outreach coordinator or be used to increase the program coordinator’s hours from four to as many as seven a week and to expand that job to include coordination of volunteers.
The board’s main objective, members agreed, is to relieve Quarles of most if not all of the legwork involved in organizing programs and trips, giving her more time to work with people who need her services. Quarles said one huge benefit of having those extra hours will be that the Hildreth House senior center will be open five days a week instead of four, and she will have more time to follow up on clients. Quarles is about to launch a new Living Alone support group that will meet every other week, she said, and she hopes to have time for more such groups.
The COA has been trying for some time to get funding for a full-time director. Last year, a request for $12,500 to make that happen was part of a $786,000 Proposition 2½ override question that passed easily at Annual Town Meeting in April but failed by 86 votes at the polls three days later. A second, $200,000 override question passed at a special election in June, but that amount barely covered the pared-down fiscal 2009 level-service budget shortfall and allowed no new spending. Despite considerable support for increasing the COA budget, both at Town Meeting and among the selectmen, hope for more funding was all but extinguished this past fall when all departments were asked to submit level-funded budgets and warned to prepare for a long economic downturn.
But the deteriorating budget picture didn’t deter Board of Selectmen Chairman Leo Blair, who supported the proposed increase last year and was determined to find more money for the COA. Blair said last week he had told COA board Chairwoman Carlene Phillips last spring that he would support a request for more funding this year, and with backing from other selectmen, notably Lucy Wallace and Tim Clark, that’s just what he did. At a selectmen’s budget hearing on March 3, Blair proposed that $15,000 be added to the COA’s fiscal 2010 budget on the grounds that 42 newly approved apartments on Ayer Road—to be rented to people 55 and older—will increase the COA’s workload, and that the budget increase would pay for itself if it results in improving services enough to keep even one senior citizen from moving away.
Quarles and Phillips both said after that March 3 meeting that they were grateful for Blair’s support, but they expressed discomfort with the idea of asking for an increase when other departments were being cut. In the end, though, they didn’t have to ask: the selectmen approved the increase at their meeting last week and the Finance Committee accepted it with no discussion last Saturday.
