Cape Girardeau County Commission approves senior board's recommendations

The Cape Girardeau County Commission unanimously approved recommendations for grants by the Cape Girardeau County Senior Citizens' Services Fund Board at its meeting Monday. The grants total $547,450.

The commissioners had put off the vote last week after questioning why $6,000 was being given to Gold Leaf Transportation, a private Jackson-based company, rather than the Cape Girardeau County Transit Authority.

On Monday, Presiding Commissioner Gerald Jones said he'd talked with senior board chairman Dale Rauh, who told him the vote to approve Gold Leaf's grant was unanimous.

"A lot of people are using it because they only charge $2," Jones said. "The board also gave the county transit authority $100,000."

Jones said he'd been told the senior board "had a program in place where they could identify where this amount of money would be used for senior citizens and no other program."

Neither members of the senior board nor representatives from Gold Leaf Transportation attended Monday's meeting. Tom Mogelnicki, the county transit authority's executive director, did. He said he wanted to hear what the commissioners had to say about the grants.

First District Commissioner Larry Bock said he wasn't trying to second-guess the senior board's vote when he questioned the grant recommendation Thursday.

"My question was if they could give county money to a private company," he said.

Second District Commissioner Jay Purcell said the commissioners didn't intend to mandate that county money must be given to other governmental agencies.

"There's nothing wrong with a little competition," he said.

At that, Jones called for a vote on the grant recommendations. After Bock moved to approve the funding, Purcell seconded the motion and it passed unanimously.

Then the commissioners turned their collective attention to Mogelnicki. Jones said he'd gotten calls from at least two transit authority senior customers, one complaining about being charged $20 for a round trip from Jackson to Cape Girardeau, the other for having to pay $13 to take a casserole to her church.

Mogelnicki told the board a one-way trip between Cape Girardeau and Jackson costs $10. He said the 70 percent of the transit authority's 120,000 annual rides are taken by seniors. He said the transit authority's $1.6 million budget is subsidized by $600,000 from MoDOT, $100,000 from the senior board, $70,000 from the county, $110,000 from the city of Cape Girardeau (mostly for bus service) and -- if approved later this month -- $7,500 from the city of Jackson, but it still doesn't cover the cost of a Jackson-Cape Girardeau round trip, which he said was $39.

Mogelnicki said Gold Leaf can't sustain itself on $4 fares. Calls to Gold Leaf Transportation owner Sherri Coomer were not returned.

pmcnichol@semissourian.com

388-3646

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