A millage renewal on Oct. 4, proposition No. 2, will attempt to maintain services for both the Council On Aging St. Tammany and STARC. This is not a new tax, simply a renewal.

The tax renewal will provide one mill for each group, generating a little under $1 million each. The millage, originally passed in 1999, will provide funding for the next 10 years, if approved.

Director of COAST Mary Toti, said the millage renewal, amounting to about half of the organization’s budget, is needed for the group that operates seven senior centers across the parish and provides services to the elderly such as transportation and meals. The group provides about 195,000 meals annually to senior citizens and senior centers and through home delivery at an annual cost of $1,001,659.

Buses such as these owned by COAST help provide the elderly with needed transportation to senior centers, doctor appointments and the drug store. (Staff photo by Debbie Glover)

Transportation provided at minimal cost to seniors costs the group $651,212 annually. Transportation, reserved two days in advance, provides a way for seniors to get to doctors’ appointments and senior centers and go on errands, such as to the drug store.

Other funds go toward building rentals and maintenance and programs such as the Senior Olympics.

The funding is needed to provide services to the elderly in the parish, Toti said.

STARC, included in the same millage renewal proposition, provides services to citizens with developmental disabilities and/or mental retardation. Director Diane Baham said among the services STARC has been able to provide are meaningful jobs for their clients, including the beginning of a commercial linen service, a retail dry cleaners and an adult day care center.

Their cleaning service will pick up and deliver as well as repair rips, sew buttons, preserve wedding gowns and clean Mardi Gras costumes. They also have a bead program where Mardi Gras beads are recycled, repackaged and sold. They already have orders for beads from Mardi Gras and St. Patrick’s Day paraders. There is also an art program for clients, and clients can sell their artwork as well as note cards made from their art.

Baham said one of the main things the millage has allowed STARC to do is provide transitional funding for special needs clients that are on waiting lists for federal funds.

“The millage is the lifeblood of this organization. We’d be dead in the water without it,” she said.

Through the current millage, services were sustained through the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and all programs have been able to continue even though there has been budget cuts and insufficient funding from other sources.

Baham said STARC-supported programs allows their clients to be productive, taxpaying citizens. Currently, over 125 clients are in the program, which offers supervised on the job training. Some clients have been in the same job since the program was started, and many have been reliable employees for at least four to five years, Baham said. STARC provides housekeeping services for the LaQuinta Inn, Delgado Community College and the United Way building. In addition, the linen service works for hospitals, restaurants and other institutions.

In fact, Baham said STARC has a partnership with COAST to provide light housekeeping services for aging senior citizens who can no longer do housework. She said this partnership with COAST has proven to be “phenomenal.”

Both groups say it is only through the generosity of people in St. Tammany Parish that STARC and COAST have been able to make such needed progress over the past nine years for citizens who need the services they provide.