Senior center easing out of red

WASILLA — For an organization facing dire financial straights not long ago, the announcement Friday from Wasilla Area Seniors Inc. marked a huge transformation.

Beginning July 1, the Wasilla Senior Center returned to its normal hours of operation from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday. It will expand services to include a weekly bingo game and bistro, and the popular congregate meals and meal delivery service will continue without interruption.

This comes less than four months after WASI — facing a six-figure budget deficit — curtailed the center’s hours, leaving the doors unlocked for three hours each day. Officials ended the adult day care program, limited seniors access to their gym facility and activity rooms, and the future of their meal services looked uncertain.

“We had to determine what our actual focus should be,” said Sondra Kaplan, executive director of WASI, in an interview in April. “We were trying to cover too many areas with too little funding.”

In a follow-up Monday, Kaplan said the organization took a two-pronged approach to fix the situation during the shortened hours.

The first was internal. Kaplan, herself hired in January to fix the growing deficit, worked with a senior advisory panel and volunteer board of directors to evaluate every program for cost and benefit.

“We were still running with the needs of yesterday,” Kaplan said. “We had to rearrange WASI to meet today’s needs.”

For example, she said they were able to cut spending on meal services in half simply by focusing spending in different areas.

“We had to evaluate where we were spending our money,” Kaplan said. “We had to just be more responsible.”

The second fix was external. Without the support of the community and local government, the senior center would have collapsed, Kaplan said. In addition to the advisory panel and board of directors, volunteers now help run many aspects of the center. The city of Wasilla wrote a monthly donation into its fiscal year 2010 budget. Callers raised more than $30,000 in the feed-a-senior-for-a-day phone-a-thon.

“That was an absolute success,” Kaplan said. “My goal was $50,000, and that still puts us $20,000 below the budget for the 2008/2009 fiscal year. We had to carry that deficit over, but we’re cutting into the budget even more, so that’s not a problem.”

With the expanded hours, the senior center is not only offering most services it once did, but it is looking to new revenue generating ventures. Bingo Mania has agreed to run a Wednesday game at the center from 12:30 to 3 p.m., with WASI keeping all the profits. During the same time, Bella Vita Bistro will sell gourmet soups and sandwiches out of the senior center’s kitchen.

The adult day care is the one service WASI is not bringing back, Kaplan said. Palmer Senior Center took over its case load when the hours were cut, and that center is still working within capacity, she said.

“If there is a need, we will look at that,” Kaplan said. “But if we can partner with someone in the community, let’s do that.”

With all the changes, Kaplan expects the organization to run a surplus in fiscal year 2010, something it has not done in seven years.

“It’s starting to look like there’s light at the end of the tunnel,” she said.

Contact Todd L. Disher at todd.disher@frontiersman.com or 352-2252.