Meals-on-Wheels SAVES money! And I can prove it.

So if you think that GOVERNMENT IS THE PROBLEM, I want to tell you about myself.

Why?

Because I am the government. Me and hundreds of thousands of people just like me.

For 15 years I worked for a city that had a contract with the County of Los Angeles who got the funding from the State of California who got their funding from the Older American’s Act which is funded each year by the Congress of the United States. 

I managed the contract with the County of Los Angeles through the city’s senior program that included a meals-on-wheels nutrition operation that fed 600 seniors lunch each day. The program included 13 meals-on-wheels routes and 4 senior centers. The contract also included social workers that assisted seniors who needed help with their social security, applying for food stamps, transportation and lots of other day-to-day needs.

The Older Americans Act funding hasn’t been increased by Congress since the Republicans took control of Washington. They didn’t always have the Presidency, but they did have control of the House of Representatives where all legislation and budget matters originate.

And now Donald J. Trump’s budget will defund this program. Many programs like the WIC program, SNAP (food stamps), school lunches, etc. not only save lives, they save tax dollars.  Only one example: WIC decreases premature births by 34%. Premature births cost $77,000 vs. $1,700 for full term. WIC saves $75,000+ per birth!

My grant was more or less the same for the 15 years I managed the operation. I was alloted $1.72 for food costs. There was a bit more for packaging and some money for capital equipment some years. I learned to make miracles happen. My two dozen employees were almost all part time with no benefits making slightly better than minimum wage. 14 of those employees delivered meals. 4 of them managed the 4 senior centers. 6 of them worked in the commercial kitchen were we cooked every day for 600 senior citizens.

It takes a lot of labor to run a commercial kitchen and feed 600 seniors

Beyond the one manager for each senior center I had no money for the staff to serve the meals and set up and clean up and do all the endless paperwork to prove we served exactly the number of meals we reported to LA County each day. Six people in a commercial kitchen can cook 600 meals, but I still need a dishwasher, someone to receive deliveries and put them in freezers, refrigerators, store rooms, pantries and date each can or carton then rotate the stock. I need people to assemble the meals-on-wheels and help the drivers load up since we only had 2 hours to deliver all the meals. I still need a driver to deliver to the other 4 senior centers.

Meals-on-wheels allows seniors to stay in their own homes longer. MetLife did a study saying the average cost of nursing home is about $90,000 per year. The Harrah Foundation with the National Meals-on-Wheels organization found about 12% of seniors have “food insecurity” (hunger). Other studies have said on average  meals-on-wheels cost about $2,500 a year or about the same as one day in a hospital. Those hospital bills are paid for by Medicare and Medicaid in most cases.

I got very good at staffing without spending any money. First, volunteers. Love them. Can’t use only volunteers to run an operation that has lots of rules and complexity. I certainly did learn to “rely on the kindness of strangers”, as Blanche DuBois so famously said in A Streetcar Named Desire.  I couldn’t have run the operation without volunteers. I also worked with group homes for developmentally disabled adults. They came to work for me and got much needed work experience. Some could only do simple tasks like set the table in the dining room, some were quite high functioning and could serve the 70 or so seniors all by themselves. I found a federal program (Title V) that trained seniors who wanted or needed to re-enter the work force. They came to work for me, they got job training, the Feds paid their wages. Well, only for a short time. They weren’t allowed to stay long unless I hired them.

Trump’s budget also set to cut out this program for seniors returning to the workforce.

My biggest problem was trucks. Since we had only two hours after the food leaves the kitchen to deliver the last meal to the last senior, I had to purchase and maintain a small fleet of trucks. Each truck costs about $50,000. They are pick-up trucks with a unit that is half oven and half refrigerator. The Health Department routinely road along on my routes and checked the temperature of the last meal delivered. These trucks were the only way to keep the meals hot, the milk cold and our seniors safe from food poisoning.

My secret source of help turned out to be other City employees. When I couldn’t get money from the City for trucks, I enlisted the help of the people at Parks and Recreation that did have trucks they were going to phase out. They quietly moved them to my operation.

These trucks are priceless to keep food safe. You still have to write a check for about $50,000 before they will let you take it

Then I got a grant from the County to pay for the oven/refrigerator units. The guys at the City garage figured how to put the units on the truck and to do the maintenance so it didn’t show up on my line items in the budget. Everybody, even City government employees, has a mother or a grandmother or someone who has been on meals-on-wheels. They know this program saves lives. As long as we all swore each other to secrecy, the City was none the wiser and 600 seniors got fed every day.

All of these people, the paid employees, the volunteers, the developmentally disabled adults, the Title V workers are the government. Every layer of government is basically functioning because of people like us. America, WE are the government! Yes, the big shots are often stupid and incompetent. The people who actually do the work do it too often in spite of our bosses. Your tax dollars buys you a great deal for that $1.72 for food costs.

I am the government. The hundreds of us who managed to feed 600 seniors everyday are the government and we are proud of what we did.  

P.S Find a senior center near you and volunteer.