Despite possible federal cuts, Meals on Wheels keeps rolling

By John Howell
Posted 3/30/17

By JOHN HOWELL It's not unusual that volunteers delivering Meals on Wheels leave with something they might not have expected, which can make their day. That's what happened Tuesday when Mayor Scott Avedisian delivered a ham and pineapple dinner to Frank

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Despite possible federal cuts, Meals on Wheels keeps rolling

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It’s not unusual that volunteers delivering Meals on Wheels leave with something they might not have expected, which can make their day.

That’s what happened Tuesday when Mayor Scott Avedisian delivered a ham and pineapple dinner to Frank Amalfetano, who lives on Commonwealth Avenue not all that far from Kent Hospital. Avedisian and Amalfetano have known each another for years and predictably they talked about old times. Yet the mayor learned something new. While Amalfetano is known for the decades he ran Jennie’s Ice Cream in Conimicut, he revealed he once owned a liquor store.

Avedisian was incredulous, thinking Amalfetano was putting one on especially when he said he had been held up at gunpoint and man demanded his money, leaving after he fired a shot.

Now 92 years old and having difficulty with his eyesight, Amalfetano knew he had the attention of his visitors and carried on with his story that we’ll get to shortly.

What probably isn’t as apparent to him, however, are questions swirling around the future of Meals on Wheels of Rhode Island in light of President Trump’s budget. Last year about 700 volunteers statewide delivered 345,262 meals to about 1,200 Rhode Islanders.

The Rhode Island program is an autonomous organization although it shares its name with organizations like it across the country and works with an association representing common interests nationally. Unlike some of its sister organizations, explains executive director Heather Amaral, the Rhode Island Meals on Wheels budget is not supplemented by Community Development Block Grants that Trump’s budget threatens to put on the chopping block.

Nonetheless, she said, because the Trump budget targets the Department of Health and Human Services for an 18 percent cut, there’s the assumption there will be a corresponding cut in Older American Act funds that finances about $930,000 of the Rhode Island Meals on Wheels budget.

“We really don’t know anything yet,” said Amaral, “but that would be a 30 percent cut.”

In addition to those federal funds, the state funds $535,000 of the state’s $3 million budget. Remaining amounts come in corporate support as well as meal payments and contributions.

Uncertainty over the Trump budget has promoted questions from volunteers and recipients.

“We are continuing operations,” said Amaral, “we’re reassuring everyone we’re not going anywhere.”

That’s good news for a lot of people who can’t get out and for whom Meals on Wheels helps enable them to stay in their own homes. In Warwick, 243 people were helped in 2016, receiving a total of 28,912 meals. In Cranston the numbers were 203 people and 27,318 meals and in Johnston it was 89 people and 12,390 meals.

There’s more to the program than meals that are prepared by a Massachusetts caterer and cold shipped to distribution centers across the state to be picked up by volunteers who staff 80 routes statewide. Meals are delivered five times a week with each volunteer covering a route of 15 to 20 stops in an hour to 90 minutes.

Amaral points out that volunteers “check” on their people, learning of their health and such basics as whether they ate the last meal delivered and if the home is properly heated.

Avedisian is one of many elected officials who stepped forward to deliver a meal this month, which is March for Meals Month. The purpose of the month is to raise public awareness of senior hunger and isolation, encourage community action and raise program funds.

Amaral agrees the Trump administration has raised a level of uncertainty over the future of the program and some people are anxious. But she is pushing ahead.

“We’re doing what we’re doing,” she said.

But Avedisian and the folks from Meals on Wheels, accompanied by John Soucy of Webster Bank who wanted to see first hand the work dome by the agency, were in no rush to leave.

Amalfetano continued with his story.

“Did you get hit?” Avedisian asked of the hold up. Amalfetano assured him that the bullet buried itself in the side of a fridge. He went on to tell how he visited his doctor who as part of a normal checkup put him through a series of tests. The results, Amalfetano said, found that he had a variety of conditions, but they had all been caught in time.

Sometime later, Amalfetano said he returned to the doctor’s office and placed something on his desk.

The doctor asked, “What’s that?”

“You said I dodged a bullet,” Amalfetano told his doctor, “Well, there it is.”

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