News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
The Upper Cumberland Human Resources Agency (UCHRA) could see changes in how its nutrition program operates later this year.
Executive Director Mark Farley said three counties are interested in helping provide meals through their senior centers.
“The senior centers in Pickett, Overton, and Fentress are going to take over the nutrition program and try and run with it, see if they can try to cook and prepare a better product there and get a better outcome,” Farley said. “We’re fully supporting that. We’re going to assist in any way we can.”
The agency’s board of directors, made of regional city and county mayors, discussed the proposed changes during a special-called meeting Friday.
Farley said the changes would result in the program moving to deliver a week’s worth of frozen meals to clients once a week. Deliveries would occur twice or three times per week in Cumberland and Putnam counties, respectively.
Jackson County Mayor Randy Heady said his county would like to return to delivering hot meals to clients in the future.
“There’s a man when I went to deliver meals, I know him, he’s got cancer, he can not reheat this meal, but he didn’t eat the meal we showed up with that day,” Heady said. “He didn’t eat it. He said ‘I don’t want it.’ There’s another home we went to, I know that lady can’t heat her meal but she has an in-home caregiver that comes in. I’m hoping that person will heat that meal for them but I don’t know that. That’s why I’d like to get back to us doing it.”
The changes would also include closing one of Jackson and DeKalb county’s two congregate meal sites.
Farley said the program simply isn’t financially stable to continue operating multiple sites in both counties.
“Somewhere in the past because the program was much stronger and in better shape financially, a couple of our communities… had added a congregate site,” Farley said. “Really we’re only required to have one. From a financial standpoint, we need to get back to where we’re only serving that one community [in each county].”
DeKalb County currently has one meal site in Smithville and Alexandria, while Jackson County has one in Gainesboro and Granville. An official decision on which sites will close was not officially determined.
Farley said the program is estimated to lose approximately $65,000 during the next fiscal year. That number, he notes, is down from approximately $300,000 lost per year over the last few years.
The UCHRA’s executive committee could vote on making the changes official at their next meeting in June.
