Betsy Staber: Senior meal program needs permanent home in Moultonborough

To The Daily Sun,

As a petitioner for Article 7 in Moultonborough, I write to ask for your vote on Saturday, May 14. This warrant article requests that we raise and appropriate $865,000 to build a new commercial kitchen onto the Moultonborough Function Hall, from which the senior meals program may operate.

The senior meals program is critical to so many; it provides hot, nutritious meals, socialization opportunity, wellness checks, food security, and so very importantly, allows for continued independent living in one’s own home. It needs an appropriate, permanent home, so that it may continue to accommodate the rising demand of the use of the program by our fellow townspeople.

Last year, the program provided over 31,000 meals, and is projecting over 32,000 for 2022. The program long-ago outgrew the now deteriorated kitchen and food storage areas. As the median age in Moultonborough rises (it is 12.5 years above the New Hampshire median), and inflationary pressures incentivize program use, the rise in program usage will soon prove unsustainable in the current kitchen (originally built as a small, incidental kitchen for the Lion’s Club).

This is no time to leave it to others to address — your affirmative vote will make the difference between needlessly tearing down a perfectly sound asset (as the pending HUB project promises to do) to make room for a multi-million-dollar, bonded project that will have permanent and perpetual annual tax consequences for our entire community. Article 7 proposes a non-bonded project truly worthy of your tax dollars. It is not a “want”, but unavoidably arose to address an actual “need” within our community.

Be present and accounted for. Please come to Town Meeting this May 14, and vote yes to preserve and improve this town-owned asset (9 a.m. at Moultonborough Academy).

Betsy Staber

Moultonborough