County hopes to fill gaps in meal delivery program

With a lack of available volunteers, the county is considering entering a five-month contract with Pur Foods LLC to provide Mom’s Meal prepackaged frozen meals to a portion of its senior client base.

“Mom’s Meals has been approaching us for several years now to see if they could do a contract with us,” Brooks said. “Up until this past year, we haven’t had problems doing meal deliveries to our clients. But our volunteer database has gone down tremendously.”

Brooks said that because of the state’s Major Disaster Declaration, the county must provide meals to any senior that is fearful of leaving their home to procure food during the pandemic.

“If they call the office and state that, by law, by the MDD rule, we have to provide a home-delivered meal to them,” he said.

As a result, the department has gone from providing approximately 300 meals per day to 450 for Greene seniors, Brooks said.

“Because of that, we’ve had to put a waiting list together for several of our home-delivered meal routes,” he said. “Acra has two home-delivered meal routes and right now they’re both full. We have people on waiting lists to get meals to. Our Lexington route is also full and we have people on a waiting list.”

Brooks noted that the number of clients on each route must be limited since state Department of Health regulations mandate that the last meal delivered on a given route must meet a minimum temperature upon delivery.

If the county enters a contract with Mom’s Meals, the Iowa company could ship five to 10 meals per package to seniors.

“We’re not looking to eliminate the volunteers,” Brooks said. “If we could have the volunteer deliver one meal per week and have the other four meals delivered on these routes that are difficult to get to, or difficult to have volunteers on, the nutritional value of it is still covered.”

The contract, which would cover the period from Aug. 1 until the end of the year, would pay Mom’s Meals a minimum of $6.99 per meal, Brooks said. The average meal would likely cost $15 to $20, depending on its contents.

The County Services Committee voted unanimously Monday to approve the resolution adopting the contract, with a full legislature vote forthcoming.

Greene County Legislator Harry Lennon, D-Cairo, voiced concerns about providing some senior meals through the mail instead of in-person delivery.

“I’m concerned because face-to-face is very important,” Lennon said. “I’m also concerned because some of our seniors don’t heat that meal up, they get it and they eat it. How do we know that a number of our seniors will be able to heat the meals up in a microwave and eat it?”

Department case managers will be in contact with all senior clients to ensure they have access to hot meals, Brooks said. The alternative to the mailed meals would be eliminating some meal routes.

“If we don’t have the volunteers or the staff to do the route, the route will be canceled,” he said.

Many of the program’s volunteers have aged out of the initiative or are exhausted from years of driving the delivery routes, Brooks said. Many of the volunteers wanted zero compensation for their work, even declining to submit mileage forms for gas reimbursement.

Greene County Legislator Ed Bloomer, R-Athens, personally volunteers with the meal delivery program, including a last-minute shift Monday morning when another volunteer was sidelines by COVID-19.

“These are not new problems,” Bloomer said. “This has been going on for a long time. COVID has made it worse, but it was before COVID as well. We are competing with every nonprofit in the country for volunteers. They’ve been pulling their hair out for quite a while trying to figure out how to get nutrition to everyone who can’t do it on their own.”

Greene County Legislator Matt Luvera, R-Catskill, said the county needed a call to action to recruit more volunteers for the meal delivery program.

The county receives $50,000 annually for the program through Americorps’ RSVP program, with the county contributing $42,000 per year.

Greene County Administrator Shaun Groden said filling the gaps in the senior meal program is vital.

“You’re talking about potentially a very isolated elder community,” he said Tuesday. “In the senior world I think there’s still concerns about COVID because most of our fatalities have been with seniors, many with comorbidities. So they’re naturally more prone to be isolated and staying in the house. Therefore, can they get out to the grocery store and can they drive? If they can’t and they’re isolated, getting them nutrition is the key.”