As Michigan ages, funding gaps widen for senior centers. Some call for change

• Senior centers may be more important than ever as Michigan confronts an aging crisis 
• Many centers are forced to cobble together funding to survive because of the state’s hodgepodge of local millages 
• That builds wide inequities in the system — from country club-like centers that stand on their own to those fitted into old buildings or tucked into parks and rec departments

ROCHESTER — Entering the sprawling OPC Social & Activity Center is an exercise in choice: 

Pickleball or pottery? Table tennis or tai chi? 

This senior center’s stone fireplace beckons book clubs and knitting circles; two pools provide synchronized swimming and lap lanes.

“Welcome to the OPC, the best place to be over 50,” a smiling director, Renee Cortright says to a visitor. She extends one hand; the other holds a 48-page, full-color listing of May events.

But this is a tale of two senior centers in Michigan, a state aging faster than most others. Each day, an average of 380 more Michiganders turn 65. 

Yet the state’s network of centers is largely built on a hodgepodge of local taxes that advocates say has created a system of have and have-nots — and led to calls for change that have gone unanswered in Lansing. 

Some centers, like the OPC, offer cutting-edge activities. Most others offer far less, the result of a state system that places the onus of recreation — which studies show is crucial to staving off dementia and prolonging life — disproportionately on local communities.

“Most senior centers operate on a very slim, shoe-string budget,” Kim Philllips, president of the Michigan Association of Senior Centers. “Culturally that’s how they’ve always operated.”

But a rapidly graying population is putting extra pressure not only on centers, but also — as Bridge has reported — on the state’s infrastructure of services that’s both disjointed and becoming overwhelmed.

An hour south of Rochester’s 90,000 square-foot facility is the Plymouth Friendship Center. Both serve areas whose median income is above-average. 

The experience is worlds apart.

On a recent afternoon at Plymouth Friendship Center, lights were turned off and its gathering room empty. That’s because the center operates only at times with planned activities, rather than staying open throughout the day.

The director at the Plymouth Community Council on Aging, which coordinates the activities for the center, has warned that the council’s $100,000 budget won’t be enough to keep the center running to the end of the year. 

Unlike the Rochester community that supports the OPC with a 0.32-mill levy that raises more than $2.5 million each year, Plymouth voters don’t pay for a senior tax. 

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Twelve of Michigan’s 83 counties have no extra tax for senior care, including three of the largest: Wayne, Oakland and Macomb. Funding from those taxes can vary dramatically, from $38 annually per senior in Iron County to $301 in Otsego County.

Statewide, 21 cities also add on a separate tax for services.  In Plymouth, the issue has never gone before voters, said Bobbie Pummill, director of the Plymouth Community Council on Aging.

Rather, as the center’s only full-time employee, Pummill asks for money each budget cycle. Some funds come from the city of Plymouth, Plymouth Township and the United Way, while the township provides the building and pays utilities.

Until recently, the budget was bolstered by COVID-era funds and some community grants — enough to “float it out for a few years,” Pummill said.

For Easter, the center’s part-time accountant used her own money for the nine dozen eggs and other groceries for Easter breakfast April 17. Another board member helped cook for the more than 50 residents who stopped by.

Another donation will pay for decorations for the upcoming 1960s-themed celebration, while a local business has stepped up to pay for the music.

Pummill said she receives about 300 calls or visits a year from seniors asking for services — help paying bills, finding home help, and otherwise navigating Michigan’s complex structure of aging services.

“A senior center official can stretch a nickel like no one can,” said Lynn Alexander, formerly the director of Michigan’s Office of Services to the Aging and a consultant on senior services and caregiving.

“Senior centers tend to be the front line for people who are going in to look for resources,” said Phillips of the senior center association. “We’re very often the first place people go to for help, but the last in line for funding opportunities.” 

Whose priorities?

That is a question about priorities, said Rod Auton, manager of Senior Services in Calhoun County in south central Michigan.

There, $3.5 million per year collected from a local tax are “absolutely critical,” he said.

Combined with Older Americans Act dollars and other sources, last year those funds helped pay for fitness classes as well as 1,070 home-delivered and congregate meals, 3,131 rides, 520 vision, hearing and dental services, 869 sessions to help people navigate benefits, and 304 heating bills. Others received help for caregiving, legal assistance and money management and even for  minor home repairs — patching a roof link or fixing broken porch steps, he said.

“It’s about how we define a community and what it means to be part of a community. Within that definition, there’s got to be something about caring for our neighbors,” Auton said. 

The core mission of senior centers — big, small, urban or rural — is to keep older residents engaged and active, much like the four women who last week were putting final touches on pottery projects at the OPC.

In Calhoun County, Auton argues that there’s a financial case, too, for a stronger network of senior centers.

By supporting older residents in ways that help them stay as independent as possible, senior centers residents — and ultimately taxpayers — avoid costly nursing home care. 

Even a semi-private nursing home room in Michigan cost about $10,570 a month in 2023, a bill that can quickly wipe out a residents’ savings. That, in turn, forces taxpayer-funded Medicaid to pick up the cost. About 2 in 3 residents of Michigan nursing homes are now paid by Medicaid.

“If we don’t take care of our older adults so they can stay at home, who pays that Medicaid?” Auton said. “At the end of the day, the cost of care comes back to us, and it’s going to be much more expensive if it’s care in a nursing home.”

Phillips agrees.

“We have to be forward-thinking and stop apologizing for needing to operate our senior centers like a business,” Phillips said.

While Lansing is considering legislation to protect older residents from scams and stay in homes, there’s no movement to change the funding of senior centers.

Federal money. Sometimes.

Michigan isn’t alone in its cobbled funding for senior centers, said Pam Curtis, CEO of the Senior Resources of West Michigan.

The agency serves three west Michigan counties, and it must coordinate services from a variety of local funding. Oceana County’s millage covers about 70% of the costs for its Council on Aging, which serves residents 60 and older. Muskegon passed its first millage in 2016 and renewed it last year. And while some Ottawa County local communities have senior millages, other communities do not. Neither is there a county-wide millage.

In fact, Michigan does more than many other states in bolstering federal funds with local millages, said Curtis, who also is president of USAging, the national organization that represents Area Agencies on Aging like Senior Resources.

Certainly, communities that wish to support seniors in a robust way should be able to do so, she said.

And she acknowledged: Millages aren’t easy and they are limited — not only by voters’ appetites for them, but by Michigan’s Headlee Amendment, too, which limits how much communities can raise taxes.

“Sometimes (voters) might be tapped out. Sometimes it might be that people just don’t have the stomach for it,” she said.

At the Senior Services at Macomb County, director Sheila Cote, has wanted to try to pass a tax for years. A task force considered such a tax just before the COVID pandemic, she said.

“Where it hit the wall was just competing interests for funds, and we were coming out of a pandemic,” she said. “It didn’t seem right time to ask with all the uncertainty in the economy.”

“I haven’t given up,” she added.

In Plymouth, Pummill said she has asked the city and township to put a tax on the ballot.

“At least give us a chance to ask,” she said.

City Manager Paul Sincock told Bridge by email that the city is instead considering an “independent senior needs survey” to help guide the city’s priorities.

“We need to determine what are the varied needs of this population group,” he wrote. “We are seeing a very large range of potential service needs for the area’s senior population.”

Alexander, the consultant, said funding senior centers has always been a conundrum — one that’s especially critical now.

She suggests a special state fund, earmarked only for essential operations of senior centers, to replace old kitchen equipment, patch roofs, or repair parking lots, she said. That would allow local communities to focus on the programming and services they most need.  Senior centers could draw from the account only with their own “matching funds.”

Afterall, a small cost can threaten an entire program, said Alexander, who worked under Republican Gov. Rick Snyder.

“I’d go into a center, and someone would say ‘See that oven there? It’s 40 years old. If it goes down, so does our entire meal program,’ ” Alexander said, recalling her days as the director of the state office. “We need to do better.”