CENTER: Board strives for viability, relevance

I appreciate the willingness of The Press to make headline news of the controversy at Lake City Center over future direction. The struggle is being experienced by senior centers throughout Idaho and across the country.

Senior centers are grass roots, neighborhood-based organizations serving as visible access points for older adults in our communities. The staff must continually shift and shape their operations to respond to present needs. Centers offer an important infrastructure to build upon and strengthen each community's capacity to meet the challenges of an aging society.

I commend the Lake City Center Board of Directors for their efforts toward viability and relevance. What is important to viability is the relevancy to the community, and a community that is defined with aging as a family issue, not an isolating one. Living at a time when the lifespan is ever growing, older adults can span multiple generations and there is a need to be relevant to more than one of those generations.

What would be a true boon to centers in Idaho is for cities to wake up to including the aging population in their definition of diversity. It is not uncommon in other parts of the country for centers to receive support from cities through their Parks and Recreation departments. This kind of partnership could truly assist the meager staff in programming and finance.

When Lake City Center Board of Directors stretched their imaginations they knew the risk of inciting naysayers. What organization today is exempt from continuous improvement?

PEARL BOUCHARD, director

Area Agency on Aging of North Idaho

Coeur d'Alene