Local seniors join in to cut the ribbon on the new Fairview Senior Center. / CCCOA
FAIRVIEW – The Cullman County Commission on Aging (CCCOA) on Tuesday cut the ribbon on its newest senior center, this one in Fairview. In attendance were State Rep. Randall Shedd, R-Fairview, Cullman County Commissioners Garry Marchman and Kerry Watson, Cullman County Sheriff Matt Gentry, and CCOA Director Dusty Baker, among others.
The facility, located at 660 Welcome Road, will be able to host numerous activities for area seniors, and will serve as the base for a Meals-on-Wheels feeding program for homebound seniors in an area corresponding to the Fairview school district, which includes Baileyton, Gold Ridge, Simcoe and other locations in northeast Cullman County.
In an interview earlier this year, Baker explained the feeding program, “Our Meals-on-Wheels program makes sure that seniors who are homebound (in other words, can’t drive) have adequate nutrition. This serves a dual purpose as it also lets us perform daily assurance checks that lets family and the CCCOA that they are doing OK.”
The CCCOA also advises seniors on navigating Medicare programs, assists seniors in finding low- or even no-cost prescriptions, and offers recreational and personal enrichment activities through its centers.
Shedd helped create the CCCOA when he was chairman of the County Commission in 1977. While serving as mayor of Fairview from 1996 to 2012, he also headed up the CCCOA.
Shedd said that the Fairview Senior Center has “been in the works for a long, long time–in planning stages and getting funding. When I was Director of the CCCOA, we studied the demographics of the county. The third largest senior population was in West Point, and the fourth largest was in Fairview. West Point’s senior center is in its town hall, but Fairview (Town Hall) was too small for a full-time senior center, so we had to go somewhere else and build one.”
The project was a group effort, with funding from numerous sources, including:
- $250,000 from the Alabama Department of Economic and Community Affairs
- $50,000 from Cullman County Community Development Commission
- $25,000 from the Cullman County Commission, which also provided site preparation work
- $25,000 from the Alabama Association of Resource Conservation and Development Councils
- $15,000 from the Alabama Department of Senior Services
- $4,500 from Cullman area Wal-Mart Supercenters and Distribution Center 6006
Said Shedd, “It was a partnership project where everybody pitched in.”
For more information on the CCCOA, visit online www.co.cullman.al.us/coa/index.html, or call 256-734-1241.
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