Sammy Gilliam boxes food during a pop-up pantry in December.

Molly Roberts

Since November 2020, the City of Kalona has delivered over 2,233 hot meals to seniors in the community as part of the senior meals program. The program was started last year and was such a success that the city is offering it again this winter.

The program delivers a hot meal, made by the Goodwin Senior Dining Center in Wellman, to any senior citizen resident in the corporate limits of Kalona. While the meals were free of charge last year, in an effort to make the program more sustainable, the city is now asking for payment on a sliding scale between $2 and $7, which is the full cost of the meals from the Goodwin Senior Dining Center.

“We try to treat it as the honor system,” said Kalona City Administrator Ryan Schlabaugh. “We don’t have an income threshold or anything, so if somebody wants into the program and they can pay $2, that will get them a meal. If they can pay $7, that will get them a meal. We have all different levels of payment between $2 and $7.”

Starting Nov. 30, meals will be available for delivery on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Schlabaugh said he expects the program to run through March 2022 this year.

Seniors can enroll in the program by filling out a form found online at cityofkalona.org, calling 319-656-2310 or stopping in to City Hall. There are also many ways to pay, whether recipients want to give an envelope with payment when the meals are delivered, be invoiced at the end of the month, drop off payment at City Hall or include it in their water bill payments.

“If somebody truly had the inability to pay, we would just ask that they call and speak to city staff, and we would work something out,” Schlabaugh said. “But our goal now is to try to make the program a little more self-sustainable, so we put an honor system dollar amount on it.”

Schlabaugh said the city has earmarked $7,500 from American Rescue Plan Act to help supplement the program, as well as $3,750 from local option sales tax and Washington County Riverboat Fund reserves. He said that if every single recipient could pay only $2, which he doesn’t anticipate, the city would still have funds available to keep the program running.

The City is still looking for volunteers to help deliver meals. Any groups or individuals who are interested in volunteering should call City Hall. Schlabaugh said it takes about 45 minutes to an hour to deliver a route of 15-20 meals.

“If a group is interested in helping deliver, we would work with them to carve out a day, a week, a month, or whatever schedule they want to stick to,” Schlabaugh said. “We can meet whatever their schedule would permit.”

Schlabaugh said the program was a major success last year and the city hopes to continue offering the program in the future, as well.

“I think it was an opportunity for us as a community to get outside our comfort zone and provide a really sustainable, socially responsible program that assisted a lot of people, when that social interaction was at a minimum for some and also provide a hot meal in the process” he said. “We had a lot of positive feedback from the individuals we served the meals to as well as some of the families that have participated in it to get their loved on the list.”