Senior Council Seeks More Programming, Funding From Roseville Council

One third of Roseville residents are seniors—age 55 and over.

But according to Sara Barsel, a board member of the North Suburban Senior Council, “senior programs are seriously underfunded.”

In a presentation to Roseville’s City Council Monday evening, Barsel pointed toward the $6,000 a year the city spends on the Shuttle Bug senior transport service and calculated the expense as “less than two hundredths of a percent” of the city’s annual budget.

(Barsel said she was speaking for herself, not for the NSSC.)

“I want to urge you to adopt both financial and programmatic responsibility for senior programs in Roseville in your strategic planning sessions in 2012,” Barsel said. “Seniors represent a wealth of human, intellectual capital, and it is incumbent on the city to help develop ways to use that capital constructively.”

Barsel proposed a lecture series relevant to “boomers, mature seniors and the frail elderly,” the addition of senior-targeted links on the city’s website and tutorials on inclusive urban design and housing modification.

She also advocated workshops for seniors’ caretakers on topics such as “cooking for disabilities” and said the Roseville Lutheran Church has agreed to pilot such a program.

Council member Tammy Pust also serves as president of the NSCC, and said she looks forward to the Roseville Council taking a more active role in senior programming.

“It’s NSSC’s view that it’s the cities that haven’t stepped up but, frankly, they haven’t been asked to step up. But they are now,” she said.

Council member Tammy McGehee said she wanted more volunteer options for seniors.

“I’ve been talking to quite a few caregivers, mostly who are older, and there is a lot of accumulated knowledge, and many of these people would actually like some volunteer activities that aren’t with the sick or the disabled or the incapacitated, and that might make a nice mesh with some of our immigrant populations that may need help or within our school districts,” she said.