Unless Flathead County Commissioner Gary Krueger abandons his notion that the county’s Meals on Wheels program should be privatized, there’s going to be a fight over the issue and those who favor keeping Meals on Wheels in the county’s Agency on Aging will need to muster all the facts and figures they can.
That, as I’m finding out, won’t be easy.
For me, meals served is a key statistic, and it needs to be broken down by date. If that information is online, it’s well hidden. The county’s budget for 2009 is on the county’s website, but the budgets for 2010–2012 are not. As far as I can tell, a comprehensive statistical report on the Meals on Wheels (nutrition) program is not available online, and might not even exist.
According to the county’s 2009 budget document (page G-1), “The Nutrition program prepares approximately 31,000 “congregate” means (“congregate” sounds too religious to me, so I’m going to use “communal” instead) and delivers approximately 31,000 home delivered meals annually.”
Here’s how 31,000 meals per year breaks down on a daily basis:
| Days/week served | Meals/day |
|---|---|
| 7 | 85 |
| 6 | 99 |
| 5 | 119 |
| 4 | 149 |
| 3 | 199 |
Another statistic, people served, was provided by the InterLake’s Lynnette Hintze in her story Local Agency Serves Thousands of People:
The Agency on Aging’s records, however, show that last year the agency served 1,352 people just with its meals program.
That includes 1,004 seniors served congregate meals in 2012 at the Agency on Aging building on Kelly Road plus five outlying senior centers. Meals on Wheels delivered hot meals to 348 seniors in their homes.
So far this fiscal year, through the end of March, the agency’s meal program has served nearly 1,200 clients. That includes 292 senior shut-ins who get home-delivered meals and 906 clients who are served congregate meals.
That’s useful information, but it cannot be used to accurately determine how many meals are served. People cycle in and out of the program, so the number being served at any point in time is always lower than the total. Furthermore, the actual count must be accompanied by the percentage of the population (seniors, for example) served to provide a context for the numbers.
You get the picture: it’s mostly blank. I’m surprised that detailed data describing a program so vital are not available online. Why keep the details hidden from the public? Defenders of the program have their work cut out for them. They’d better get started. Now. In fact, yesterday. You can bet the ranch that the folks who want to privatize Meals on Wheels have been working overtime to assemble their case.