Chugiak-Eagle River Senior Center gets new snow plow

EAGLE RIVER — Thanks to support from the community, the Chugiak-Eagle River Senior Center has a new four-wheeler snow plow to clear away snow from the grounds.

Office manager Shelley Phillips said the center had been trying to raise funds for the plow for several months.

“It’s been an issue in the past,” Phillips said of the needed snow removal. “We thought that the four-wheeler would work better for the kind of removal that we needed.”

The senior center reached out through fliers and local media asking for donations toward the $7,500 Polaris four-wheeler with a plow attachment, and also sold Red Robin gift cards as a fundraiser. The sum of the Polaris’ purchasing price was raised through lots of small donations, Phillips said, and the Eagle River Polaris & Arctic Cat sold the equipment to the center at a discount.

She said the other big item the senior center still needs is a mini-van for transporting seniors to doctor appointments or regular shopping trips.

Phillips said the center’s transportation fleet consists of a regular bus, a wheelchair-accessible bus, a van, a regular transit vehicle and a mini-van.

Phillips said the new mini-van will be additional to the current one and eventually replace it, as the transportation fleet ages.

“We’re finding that we’re needing to use the minivan more often than not because of the easy access to them,” she said. “They’re not that high.”

All the center’s residents are 62 or older, with most in their late 70s to early 90s, Phillips said. As the average age of the center’s residents goes up, there are more people who need something lower down that they can easily step into when they go on trips.

The center is also hosting a gun raffle fundraiser in the run-up to its annual gun show, held this year on March 11 and 12. The center is selling 500 tickets for $10 each at the front desk, and the first and second prizes are a Ruger 10/22 Takedown Rifle and a Ruger American .45 pistol.

For more information or to donate, contact the Chugiak-Eagle River Senior Center (22424 Birchwood Loop Road) at (907) 688-2674.