The mandates, especially for COVID testing, keep changing, he said. Originally he had to test his employees before they reopen and every two weeks thereafter, and now he said he has been told to test every client at the adult day center with the same frequency. Clients who want to attend the senior center regularly must be tested at least once.
The state has arranged for the tests to be sent to a lab in North Carolina, at the state’s cost, and there is a two-day result turnaround.
“The issue is there must be a physician writing an order for every one of those people, for all the times that they have to have the test," Schnabl said. “So that was a surprise that I realized on Monday.”
He said he would have to pay the physician to order the tests and they either have to train someone to do the testing or they can be self administered. He said there are about 20 to 22 seniors who used to attend the day center and around 500 people who are members of the activity center, 150 to 200 are regulars.
Monica Smith, executive director of Central Connections in Middletown, has about 800 members who use the center.
“It’s very invasive, we’re working with independent members so we’re not a nursing facility, I don’t have people on staff that are used to doing invasive procedures,” Smith said of testing.
Neither center will reopen until Butler County is lowered from its current Level 3 in the state’s advisory system for coronavirus threat. Smith said the mandates are not only expense but unclear.
“No one really has the answer,” she said. “There’s thing we’re supposed to be doing or expected to be doing or mandated to do but we don’t have answers as to how we’re supposed to do or where the money’s coming from.”
Both directors are wondering where the dollars are coming from to pay for all this. When child daycares were allowed to reopen coronavirus relief funds were made available.
Dan Tierney, press secretary for Gov. Mike DeWine, said while no direct CARES Act funding has been allotted to help with costs to reopen senior centers yet, it could be.
“We are looking at additional coronavirus relief fund allocations to various entities across government,” Tierney said. “We don’t have any decisions to announce yet but it has not been ruled out at this time.”
Schnabl said he received $46,000 from the city of Oxford to pay for things like installing plexiglass shields on tables and other expenses out of their allocations of CARES Act funding. Smith hasn’t asked yet, because she does not yet have cost estimates, but the city of Middletown also has CARES money.
“Certainly we try and help everybody that we can,” Middletown’s Director of Administrative Services Susan Cohen said
Commissioner Don Dixon said he would listen to a pitch for funding from the centers if their needs fit within the strict federal guidelines for the money.
The Council on Aging for Southwest Ohio provided a consultant, using CARES funds, to help the centers figure out how to reopen safely. The rest of the $823,909 Butler County allocation of CARES funding went to providing meals for seniors.
Middletown and Oxford are the only senior center locations left in the county since the Activity Center was shut down in West Chester Twp. Some senior programming was moved to the library and some to Chesterwood Village nursing home. The pandemic shut both options down.
“It’s terrible to say but I think it’s true, I don’t think anybody cares,” West Chester senior Nancy Williams said. “It’s like all these people are old and they’re going to die anyway. Nobody is really willing to do anything in any of these communities and I think that’s why so many of them are closing. And I do think it’s a money thing.”
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