Prineville Senior Center faces funding struggle

Lunch time at the Prineville Senior Center — a place to break bread, socialize and forget your troubles.

For $3.50, you get a whole lot more than just food.

“I love the people here, that’s why I come,” lunch-goer Ann Rothe said Thursday.

“For $3.50, you get everything, and you get waited on — and you don’t have to do dishes,” said another patron, Albert Malloy.

The local Soroptomist Club opened the center 40 years ago without any federal funding, relying on donations and money from the club’s Neat-Repeat Thrift Store.

“We went to the county and the city and all we got was, ‘Well you’ll never make it’ So we decided to show them,” said Dale Comini, vice president of the Soroptomist Charitable Trust.

But now, the thrift store is facing some stiff competition.

“Now we have more thrift stores than we have anything else in town. The sales have gone down, the donations have gone down,” said Gaylynn Mayers, president of the Prineville Soroptomists

So have the number of people coming to lunches. Organizers say it could be because a “Senior Center” comes with a bad stigma, to some.

“Well I’m a senior, but I’m not considering myself old,” Comini said.

Some old habits might have to change though, if the center wants to keep serving the community.

“We’re looking at renting out the building,” Mayers said. “We’re looking at opening it up as more of a community-slash-senior center.”

Anything to keep the doors open, to keep the food coming — and keep the people smiling.

Some say you can’t put a price on what the Senior Center provides.

“This place means everything to me, it really does. I eat here every day — every day I have a chance to,” Rothe said.

For more information on how to donate or help out, call 541-447-6844.