(Spirit Lake)– The Dickinson county board of supervisors Tuesday heard a funding request from the Northwest Aging Association for the upcoming fiscal year.
Cynthia Beauman, the agency’s Executive Director, says they’re requesting a three cent increase for each resident in the county aged 60 and over. That amounts to 11,060 dollars…compared to 10,912 dollars in the current fiscal year. Beauman says the request for increased funding reflects an increase in their cost of doing business. Beauman says the agency continues to streamline it’s operations to make them more efficient. She says the DinnerDate program is an example of that. Beauman says Northwest Aging two months ago started contracting out for meals instead of cooking them on site at the eight DinnerDate kitchens that were still in operation…including the one in Spirit Lake. Beauman says the quality of the food is just as good and she says they’ve had very few complaints. She adds that it’s still too early to tell for sure just how much savings they’ll realize, as the restructuring took place only two months ago.
Beauman says ongoing cost increases in the DinnerDate program forced them to make the change. She says it was either that or the agency was going to have to cut some programming…something she says they wanted to avoid.
The board of supervisors will take the funding request under consideration during the county’s budgeting process.
