DGreport.com

The DuPage County Board approved $120,000 in emergency funding to Meals on Wheels, enabling the program to maintain the service for the next six months.

The program, which is administered through the DuPage Senior Citizens Council, has been hard hit by budget cuts at state and federal levels and faces further cuts next year, including the loss of a $36,000 Downers Grove  grant, which village commissioners have indicated will be suspended.

Meals on Wheels serves 330,000 meals a year at a cost of more than $2 million.  At $8 per meal, the program costs more than $300,000 in Downers Grove alone. Major funding sources cover about half the cost of each meal, leaving the DuPage County Senior Citizens Council to raise the rest. Clients are asked to contribute as much as they are able.

District 3 County Board member Tom Bennington said he voted in favor of the emergency funding, calling Meals on Wheels “a good and important program.”

The program allows seniors to live independently and also provides what is for many clients their only daily social contact, he said, adding that many more would be forced into institutional living arrangements without the service.

As to the future of the Meals on Wheels program, Bennington suggested revisiting the issue once the state’s budget situation is clearer.

“My view is you try and put something in place in order to hang on and see what happens,” he said. “When it runs out, you have to re-evaluate what the program’s other funding sources are.”

Commissioner Bruce Beckman had offered a similar perspective at the council’s Nov. 3 budget hearing. While he supported suspending the grant,  Beckman said he “could be convinced to support a vastly reduced contribution for one year to serve as a transition to 2011 when we will phase that out because the program, I understand, is in financial peril.”