Up until very recently, I was just another one of the many, many seniors who use the Oak Harbor Senior Center facility for one thing or another —most of us just taking and never really giving anything back for so many of the things it has offered or given to us, asking almost nothing in return.

So I decided it was time to see that this small, worn facility that serves thousands of seniors a month should have a little pay-back from me. That’s what I am trying to do now. By writing this letter, and by creating a new database from which the senior center can hopefully operate more efficiently, I began paying it back, and at the same time began to marvel at how such an understaffed, underfunded facility can possibly do so much for so many people so often.

Our senior facility operates on an approximate, no-guarantees income every year. About two-thirds of its continually fluctuating operating funds come from the city and the county, with the remaining one-third hopefully coming from membership drives, fund-raisers and maybe a donation or two. That some of the funds come from the city and the county and are probably from taxes is no surprise — it’s a public facility. The real question is not, “Have you been aware that some of your tax money goes to support the Oak Harbor Senior Center?”, but how much tax money will go to support the Oak Harbor Senior Center from year to year?

Next year, there won’t be as much money coming to the center. But there will be over 32,000 uses of the facility, including by those who have never paid a membership fee (which is $15 a year). And there will still be those who come for lunch and will always have a place, as well as those who come for fun and will always have a place to dance or deal a deck of cards.

No one is going to guard at the door to keep the non-payingvisitors from eating lunch or dancing or playing bingo, but the hope is that everyone who does come will pay their fair share and help the center to continue offering what it tries so hard to provide now.

You can gripe about all the taxes you’ve already paid and about having to pay a little extra, but it’s just this simple: If we want to use it, we gotta help a little to pay for it. The $15 a year doesn’t even cover the cost of sending out the newsletter, so ask yourselves these questions: How is the center supposed to cover for all the costs of staying open for you and me and someone who drops in for a visit from Florida? Are the members who pay their $15 a year supposed to continue to cover for all those who don’t? (Including those who think that because they are volunteers, they have earned some special consideration?) There are 157 volunteers, and if you give me about 30 days more with that new database, I bet I’ll find that volunteers who pay a membership fee to help keep the place running far outnumber those who don’t.

There is no “arbitrary method of rule changing,” as one letter writer stated. There is only a worn out building run by a couple of very competent people who wear themselves out to get funding. If the Morrises who wrote the letter had done a little homework, they would know that it is the city council of Oak Harbor who determines what fees are set and how much should be paid — not some “blackmailing, pay-up or else, high-paid” member of an overworked staff who have done a whole lot with very little for a long time.

So if you are still living in the stone age about where money comes from, who makes the rules, and who says how things get paid for, get your facts in order and … welcome to the 24th century! Or is it 23rd? … I’m too busy volunteering my time on the new database and writing out my membership check to figure out which it is.

Ginny Weeks

Oak Harbor