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Clearwater establishes an Office on Aging
By LESTER R. DAILEY
| Article published on Thursday, April 27, 2006 |
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CLEARWATER – St. Petersburg has been called everything from “God’s Waiting Room” and “Wrinkle City” to the “Land of the Newly Wed and Nearly Dead,” but only 17.4 percent of St. Petersburg’s population is 65 or older. In Clearwater, that percentage is 21.5.
“A lot of people are amazed to learn that Clearwater has the highest proportion of residents over 65 and 85 of any U.S. city with a population of 100,000 or more,” said Kerry Kimball, manager of the city’s new Office on Aging. “St. Petersburg ranks fourth.”
But the closing of the privately-owned Senior Center in late 2004 left a void in Clearwater’s senior community, so the city appointed a Senior Center Task Force to study the problem. The task force found that the time isn’t right for the city to start its own Senior Center, but it recommended that the city establish an Office on Aging, which was done in February.
Kimball was hired as its manager. A Clearwater native, she received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the world-renowned gerontology program at the University of South Florida. She reports directly to Kevin Dunbar, head of the Parks and Recreation Department.
“This is really a dream opportunity for me,” Kimball said. “It combines my love of Clearwater and my love of gerontology. It’s very exciting and I hope I can make it all it can be.”
The first step is to hold community forums where residents, business leaders and representatives of existing senior services can determine and prioritize the needs of seniors. That information will then be incorporated into an Aging Well Master Plan.
“The city manager and City Council are very dedicated to identifying the needs of the elderly and working with the community to address those needs and the needs of aging baby boomers,” Kimball said. “I never met anyone who can quote baby boomer statistics like Mr. (Bill) Horne, (the city manager,) can. That’s supposed to be my area of expertise, but he can rattle off the numbers faster than I can.”
There are plenty of programs for the elderly in Clearwater, Kimball said, but seniors often have trouble finding them and getting transportation to them. The city is working to address those problems, she added; but meanwhile, the Senior Helpline of the Area Agency on Aging of Pasco/Pinellas is a valuable clearinghouse of senior services. It can be reached at 217-8111, or its Web site can be viewed at www.agingcarefl.org.
“The city has a wealth of opportunities for seniors through its libraries and Parks and Recreation Department,” Kimball said. There are ballroom dances, bridge games, cooking classes, computer lessons, senior-friendly exercise workouts and volunteer opportunities at a variety of city agencies. And there are semi-monthly bus trips from the Long Center on Belcher Road to such places as the Florida Aquarium in Tampa.
“It just depends upon what they enjoy doing,” Kimball said. “We recently started speed dating for seniors. It’s a really neat program in a safe atmosphere, at the Long Center, and it’s going quite well.”
An old African proverb says that it takes an entire village to raise a child. Likewise, it takes the business community, charities, social service agencies, houses of worship and younger residents to make life better for the city’s elderly.
“The whole focus is on doing what Clearwater seniors need to remain independently in their own homes while aging,” Kimball said. “It’s not just for the city to respond to; it’s a community view.”
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Article published on Thursday, April 27, 2006
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