Shannon Ernst, Director of the Churchill County Social Services Department, reported to the County Board of Health on Wednesday morning that she will be at the Pennington Life Center for the next few weeks as the county transitions control from the Coalition for Senior Citizens under the leadership of former Director Lisa Erquiaga, to Ernst’s leadership under the Department of Social Services. Churchill County is in the process of restructuring services and will take control of the Center as of July 1st.
The Center is bustling with activity as county staff have been spending this week cleaning, organizing, and learning the many activities at the Center from exercise classes to cleaning the ice cream machine.
The Churchill County Public Health Nurse, Raylene Stiehl, will be on location at the Center starting Monday offering vaccines and a wide range of other health services to local area seniors.
Lunches are currently being offered in the dining room, which is located at 952 South Maine Street, from 11:30 to 12:30, Monday through Friday. The community is invited to enjoy a meal with the seniors and the cost is $3.00 for ages 60 and up, $6.00 for anyone under 60 years.
Ernst is working with Bus Scharmann, former County Commissioner, who has been tapped as the Interim Director. They will be getting set up, hiring/rehiring staff, and ordering food and supplies. He will stay on until the new Manager is hired to help with the transition.
Buster Pierce, Operations Director, was on site Wednesday, serving lunch to the seniors and meeting with Ernst regarding transition matters. He said the Center is serving close to 60 people a day, down from 80 who attended before COVID hit. “We’re picking up,” he said, “but we lost a lot of our regulars over the past year.” The Center staff needs to work on attracting the younger seniors and get new people attending. “That’s what they have to do is work on the programs for the younger seniors, they wanted Tai Chi and we had an instructor, but he backed out. That’s something they would really like to see, anything like that they would like.”
Ernst said the activity calendar and menus will be released on Tuesday, the 29th. “We will be working with Anne McMillin, (Public Information Officer for the county) to really highlight the things we are adding over the 30 days. We hope to have a robust activity calendar released on July 1st.” We have great staff, and everybody is working closely to make this transition and I really appreciate everyone’s help.”
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