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The City of Kalona will continue to deliver meals to senior residents through the summer months.
Once a week, 25 to 30 residents receive meals prepared by the Goodwin Dining Center in Wellman and delivered by Kalona city staff. The meals were free through mid-March, but recipients now pay $4-7 per meal based on their financial ability to pay. The program was scheduled to go on hiatus at the end of April, but City Administrator Ryan Schlabaugh says, through donations, the program will continue at its current level of service with plans to increase deliveries to three days a week again this fall.
This is the final week for deliveries of free hot meals to seniors in Kalona, Wellman, Riverside, and West Chester.
Kalona City Administrator Ryan Schlabaugh says these are the last days seniors in those four communities can receive the hot meals for free, but the delivery program will continue through April for those willing to pay for their meals, “We are going to look to do a sliding scale where it will start at $4 and all the way up to $7, where we would ask those people who participate to select their comfort level based on their financial situation so we can make it a self-sustainable model to carry through.”
The City of Kalona has contributed $2,500 to the Washington County Sheriffs’ K9 Unit.
Back in early December, the department’s K9 named Vasco, died of cancer after over five years of service helping the sheriff’s office detect drugs, track missing and wanted individuals and protect partners as well as handler, Deputy Nolan Burke. They recently added a new K9 named Dzamal.
At their meeting Monday night, the Kalona City Council voted to approve the financial assistance to the K9 program and City Administrator Ryan Schlabaugh presented the check to the Washington County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday, “Staff-wise we talked about how we could participate that would be acceptable to the public and we presented that to council and they were unanimous in their support of the Washington County Sheriff’s Department as well as providing the $2,500 to help defray some of the costs associated with bringing a dog on board and sending an officer to go train for four weeks.”
Kalona to deliver free food bags to senior citizens Riverside Mayor Allen Schneider (left) and Mid-Prairie school board member Gabrielle Frederick pack food boxes at the Kalona city shop on Saturday morning. Posted
By Molly Roberts
After receiving what City Administrator Ryan Schlabaugh called “overwhelming financial support” for the city’s pop-up pantries, the City of Kalona is looking to expand their food offering program to cater directly to seniors.
For some seniors, the boxes provided at the city’s previous pop-up pantries have been too much food the boxes have been heavy and full of items that not all seniors can necessarily use. For that reason, the city hopes to create food bags that can be delivered to seniors’ homes. These bags would contain less in quantity but could possibly contain some perishable items, such as milk and fruit.