By Gary Lloyd
Sensitive about your age or feeling older?
You may want to look away.
The Trussville Senior Activity Center is now the first senior center in Jefferson County to lower its age of participation to 55. To participate, senior center attendees once had to be 62. That number was then lowered to 60.
Jefferson County Commissioner Joe Knight said at a Trussville City Council meeting last month that the change had been made, and he joked while leaving the meeting that he needed to go sign up at the senior center.
The change, said Jefferson County Office of Community and Economic Development Director Frederick Hamilton, comes from a community development block grant by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which funded work at the Trussville center.
The Trussville Senior Activity Center
photo courtesy of www.trussvilleparks.org
A cooperation agreement signed to perform the work said the center was open to people 62 and older, but someone, Hamilton said, had made the decision to allow those 60 and older to use the senior center.
Hamilton said that HUD then told Jefferson County could decide the age, and 55 was agreed upon.
“We basically made the decision so that more people would be able to use the services of the senior center,” Hamilton said.
Trussville is the first city in the county to allow 55-year-olds to use their senior center. Hamilton said that other senior citizen centers in Jefferson County built or improved with community development block grants will also make this change “in the near future” by amending their cooperation agreements, including centers in Clay, Lowtown, Adamsville and Kimberly. Hamilton said his office is currently involved in a future expansion of the Clay Senior Activity Center.
The Trussville Senior Activity Center was established Aug. 31, 1999.
Contact Gary Lloyd at news@trussvilletribune.com and follow him on Twitter @GaryALloyd.
