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Sedgwick County Considering Funding Formula Options For Senior Centers

Susan NYC
/
flickr, Creative Commons

Sedgwick County Commissioners are re-evaluating the funding formula used for senior centers during the annual budget process.

Sedgwick County provides funding for 17 senior centers each year through the aging tax mill levy.

The centers offer a variety of services, educational opportunities and physical activities for people 55 years and older.

Division on Aging Director Annette Graham says the current funding formula has been in place since 2006.

"The last couple of years, we’ve seen concerns around the budget time at the budget hearings raised about the funding formula and access to funding," Graham says.

Graham presented four funding formula options at a county commission workshop last week.

The proposals range from keeping it the same to using a formula based on demographics in a city or based on senior center membership numbers.

"Our mission as an organization is to help seniors and individuals with disabilities remain in the community as long as possible," Graham says.

The county spent about $640,000 on senior centers in the past two years. The 2018 budget provides about $10,000 less in funding.

The senior centers are just one of 15 programs in the county’s Division on Aging.

The current funding formula allots nearly half of the Division on Aging’s $1.3 million budget to the senior centers.

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Follow Deborah Shaar on Twitter @deborahshaar

 
To contact KMUW News or to send in a news tip, reach us at news@kmuw.org.

 

Deborah joined the news team at KMUW in September 2014 as a news reporter. She spent more than a dozen years working in news at both public and commercial radio and television stations in Ohio, West Virginia and Detroit, Michigan. Before relocating to Wichita in 2013, Deborah taught news and broadcasting classes at Tarrant County College in the Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas area.