Stacy McNabb cooks 400 meals a day.
Five days a week, she plans, prepares, and plates food that will get loaded into cars, and make its way to the doors of people—primarily seniors—who are in need or live below the poverty line.
“Sometimes we’re the only people seniors see. We are their lifelines,” McNabb said. “If we didn’t feed them, they probably wouldn’t eat.”
McNabb works as a chef for Santa Ynez Valley Community Outreach’s—formerly known as the Buellton Senior Center—Meals on Wheels program. She orders the food, creates the menus, and ensures it’s nutritionally balanced for vulnerable, community members.
“I’m doing a lot of work, and it’s stressful,” she said. “I’m a chef and made more money working elsewhere, [but] I took a large cut in pay to do this because I believe in this. It feels good to give back to the community, because if we don’t who will?”
Before the pandemic, McNabb and her staff made 195 to 200 meals a day. Then the virus came, forcing seniors to stay in their homes and causing Meals on Wheels demand to spike.
“It’s been really difficult because we are short-staffed—with one part-timer, one full-timer, and myself—and putting out 400 meals a day,” McNabb said.
Santa Ynez Valley Community Outreach is now feeling the sting of supply chain issues, increased demand, and spiking inflation, Chief Executive Officer Pam Gnekow said. To continue serving the community, Gnekow’s searching for funding opportunities to remain afloat, and approached the county Board of Supervisors during the June 14 budget hearings to request county aid.
“I am asking for $65,000 to keep our program going,” she said at the hearing. “We are working with other organizations and leaving that [option] open, but for us to be able to continue we are going to be needing some emergency funding.”
Since then, Gnekow told the Sun, 3rd District Supervisor Joan Hartmann’s been very cooperative and helpful, and the nonprofit’s been able to establish other collaborations to help keep the organization going, but her worries remain.
Since the pandemic, Gnekow’s organization increased its services—with a community farmer’s market, free shuttle service, and continued the Meals on Wheels program—prompting her to change the organization’s name to Santa Ynez Valley Community Outreach to better encapsulate its mission.
“We’ve just been doing so much more since COVID. [We haven’t] shut our doors one day; we’ve increased everything we were doing and participated in a lot of different programs,” she said. “It became a crazy time and we almost doubled our amount of Meals on Wheels we were doing.”
Even though the organization uses bulk pricing through a food provider, works with the Santa Barbara County Food Bank, and creates meal plans using leftover food and donations, rising costs still hit the nonprofit hard, Gnekow said.
“Our food prices are going nuts. Ground beef has gone up in a month from $1.29 a pound, to $4.79 a pound. We were spending $200 a day on milk, now we’re spending $600 a day,” Gnekow said.
She’s seeing not only a food costs increase, but food service necessities like gloves have gone up in price, too—from 96 cents to $1.80 a case. The team goes through three cases a month and orders three different sizes, causing prices to almost triple, she explained.
“When you look at a budget we made last year, it has no relevance to right now. You can’t even compare that budget to what reality is right now,” Gnekow added.
Inflation’s skyrocketed to a record-breaking 8.6 percent—the highest it’s been since 1981—affecting food costs along with the other “very obvious, hit yourself in the face,” increase in gasoline prices, she added. Gas prices have reached an average $6 per gallon in California, and $4.88 across the United States
“Almost every program we have depends on gas. Our Meals on Wheels drivers are volunteers who are impacted if they continue to volunteer and deliver. The same thing goes for our hourly employees who drive from Lompoc or Santa Maria to get here,” Gnekow continued.
Thankfully, one donor gave the organization gas vouchers and created a program to pay for the volunteers’ gas so the organization won’t have to worry about losing anyone, she said. But, it doesn’t limit the fact that there’s still 402 mouths to feed—with 85 percent of them (350) living below the poverty line and on scholarship to cover meal costs. In the last two weeks, alone, they’ve added 12 new clients, Gnekow said.
That growth may continue because of the silver tsunami—an increase in California’s senior population. According to state data, Santa Barbara County is expected to have an 118.8 percent increase in residents aged 60 and older between the years 2010 and 2060, and a 270.4 percent increase in those 85 and older.
Areas like Los Alamos, Buellton, and Solvang in central Santa Barbara County are relatively remote areas, making it difficult to get to bigger cities with more resources. Congregate living options remain limited, or full, increasing reliance on Santa Ynez Valley Community Outreach so people can stay in their homes, Gnekow said.
“It’s our job to figure out this crisis. We can’t wait. It has to be right now,” she said. “We have to fight for our seniors and do what we have to do to protect them.”
Gnekow recently met with Allan Hancock College to establish an internship program to help mitigate employment costs. Plus, the nonprofit will be moving into Buellton’s old library location to have more space for Meals on Wheels and community outreach’s programing—including food distribution and domestic violence survivor intakes.
Supervisor Hartmann told the Sun that the county is looking to allocate about $35,000 to the program, consistent with other Meals on Wheels programs. Normally, supervisors don’t allocate funding directly to nonprofits, but they made an exception this year after they decided on June 14 to divvy up unallocated budget funds between the districts.
“They’re in a really difficult position right now, and they can clearly document who they are serving. They are a county safety net for people who need meals delivered, so we are planning to allocate some money that was divided up during that budget meeting,” Hartmann said.
The decision will eventually come back to the board as an agenda item, and assuming the rest of the board agrees, it will allocate some funds to Santa Ynez Valley Community Outreach, she explained.
In addition, the county Department of Social Services will be conducting a Meals on Wheels survey to identify the county’s Meals on Wheels programs, gaps, and continued need. The report is set to be released in August, and should help identify where more funding could come from.
Hartmann said she wishes she had more solutions to help Santa Ynez Valley Community Outreach, but the county government can only do so much to prevent things like rising costs, she said.
“There are forces beyond our control, but the counties are responsible for providing safety nets. We are at the end of the road, but we are responsible for dealing with the fallout,” she said. “It’s a social lifeline, and they pivoted and took on more clients. It’s really filling both basic needs and also making contact with isolated seniors [throughout] COVID. It’s really remarkable what they do.”
Reach Staff Writer Taylor O’Connor at toconnor@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Jun 30 – Jul 7, 2022.