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Pay more attention to Brighton seniors

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Contributed by: Linda Lanker on 6/15/2007

The Brighton City Council in the next few weeks will approve a committee to work on a plan for the Adult Recreation Center. Kohl's has finally put up a sign stating that their store in Prairie Center will open this fall. Great to hear as both events have been promised for quite a long time.

Seniors are now to be recognized as part of the Brighton Community? For a long time it seemed no one was really interested in us.

Projects have been going great in the City - with downtown development, restoration, preservation, opening of the new hospital, the new Boys & Girls Club, charter schools and other schools to meet our growing populations, parks and trails and busy working on other attractions, like the skateboard Park and the baseball franchise.

Somehow, seniors weren't on the list except for a 60 unit apartment complex.

In all, the growth and development planning by age of the population hopefully was taken into consideration as very soon 1 out of 5 will be over the age of 65 (nationwide) and I think Brighton will be even higher. Let us hope experts were hired for this as they were for many other projects.

Very happy to see Kohl's move into our area as they treat seniors as a consumer in our own right. Actually, they cater to us with a Senior's Day and senior discounts, just like they do with other events such as Back to School andthe holidays likeMother and Fathers' Day.

Our Senior Center needs some new equipment - which may not be important to the rest of the community but meaningful to our lives.

Also, a part-time paid staff position needs to be upgraded or increased to2 person part-time positions. 20 hours a week paid with some extra hours at night or weekends often are more than the paid hours. We've lost several people because of the extra burden these hours put on them.

I've seen all the increases in personnel for the city - extra money allocated to fix other problems so that the city would look good for attracting other business and people to live in our community.

It's about time the Senior Center was recognized as being just as important by the city and business in our community. More could be done than just day old bread twice a week but we thank you for that.

Transportation is the biggest problem for our seniors.

There are many programs to help seniorsthrough Church organizations as well as county, state and federal programs. In our city, it's time for a council on aging to co-ordinate all the various programs. We need it for:
1. Information
2. Transportation, both public and private
3 Set up volunteer help to assist in shopping, having someone with us for medical procedures and other aid as needed.
4. Business, Schools, Church Organizations to combine programs so more can be helped.

Businessesshould havespecial shopping days for seniors and there should be discounts at local restaurants, and other events when possible.
Fresh fruits and veggies are necessary during the season. Seniors can't get to the farmers markets. Right now, theycan't even get to all the new businesses unless they have a car.

Schools - I thought students had to do community projects to graduate.
Something as simple as the Spanish class setting up a program for Seniors to learn common words and phrases would be appreciated.

Medical professionals could assist seniors, making sure they are signed up for programs that would make their lifes better. It would be interesting to see who would benefit the most.

If Seniors are happy, healthy, active, and learning we all benefit, if nothing more than in our pocketbooks and city budgets. And we all need to learn more about the lives in the community not just a blurp in the papers. Just listing events doesn't cut it.

Other things needed include:
- Grief counseling.We all can help and learn at the same time
- Care givers working with seniors as well as children
- Funds necessary for seniors to live a decent life.
- Computer acess for everyone

Life is not lived in a vacuum - what happens to one part affects all the other parts. So in building, restoring, preserving, educating, can't we include everyone the best way possible?

Linda Lanker has lived in Brighton with her husband, Claude, for seven years. She works at the Brighton Senior Center and is a Medicare Counselor.

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John Eisel

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John Eisel has posted 2865 stories and 12 comments since joining on 9/14/2005. John Eisel's average story rating is 4.39.

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