Tentative deal reached in Henderson senior transportation program

Henderson resident Nicole Laborie is not shy in expressing her opinion about the importance of the city’s senior transportation program. She knows its value first-hand.

A daily visitor to the Heritage Park Senior Facility via the program, the 79-year-old said Monday that being able to get to the facility to socialize and eat lunch for a $1-per-day round trip has been “life-saving” for low-income seniors such as herself.

“If you don’t pick us up and bring us here we wouldn’t go nowhere,” said Laborie, who cannot drive because she’s legally blind. “We’d all be dead by now.”

So talk of the city reaching a tentative agreement to keep the program going at that low cost has sent a sense of relief through the city’s large senior community.

The city has been negotiating with Independent Transportation Network, widely known as ITN Las Vegas Valley, a nonprofit senior transportation organization, to take over the program. City spokeswoman Kim Becker said the new ITN agreement is tentatively scheduled to go before the City Council on June 3 for approval. The city would subsidize the program for $50,000 per year so ITN would continue to transport the current 111 unique riders for the $1 fee. The city would also donate two transport vehicles, according to the tentative agreement.

A Special Budget Ad Hoc Committee report in February recommended Henderson eliminate the senior transportation program, citing the $236,000 annual cost to taxpayers for 111 unique monthly users such as Laborie, and that transportation is not a core city service elsewhere. City officials have been adamant since the report that dropping the program without finding a low-cost alternative was not something they were willing to do.

“We recognize there are a number of senior citizens in our community who coming to that senior center and having that transportation to get there is crucial for them to get a meal that for them may be the only meal of the day they can enjoy,” City Manager Jacob Snow said to the City Council on May 6.

The city program picks up riders at their homes and brings them to the senior facility, returning them home in the afternoon. The service runs six times between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. Another transportation service company would charge $6 a round trip, and the Regional Transportation Commission does not have a fixed route to the facility. Heritage Park is at the corner of South Racetrack Road and Burkholder Boulevard east of Boulder Highway.

Laborie, who uses other, higher-costing senior transportation services to shop and visit doctors, said the ability to come to the senior facility cheaply and to socialize and exercise in the gym is important to seniors’ mental and physical health. She said keeping the price at $1 is important for seniors on fixed incomes who cannot afford or get to other transportation.

“I come five days a week,” said Laborie, who also spoke before the City Council two weeks ago. “We cannot be isolated from other people. It’s the worst.”

Susan Bobby, Henderson’s senior services supervisor, said 10 percent to 15 percent of the nearly 400 daily visitors to the senior facility arrive with friends or third-party transportation because they can no longer drive due to a visual, physical or cognitive impairment.

ITN, which has been in Henderson since March 2010, operates a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week program that delivers visually impaired people 60 years old and up to doctor appointments, grocery stores, hair appointments, wherever they need to go at a cost of $3 per ride, $6 round trip.

Senior transportation and other senior issues are a growing concern in Henderson, which has more people over the age of 65 by percentage than Las Vegas or North Las Vegas. According to the 2010 U.S. Census, 14 percent of the Henderson’s 257,700 residents are 65 and older, and 20 percent are between 50 and 64.

While the city has delivered seniors to Heritage Park, it does not provide transports to other areas such as doctors or grocery stores. A senior transportation fair Monday at Heritage Park drew nearly 350 people to learn about those services from ITN, the RTC, Las Vegas Senior Lifeline from the Jewish Federation of Las Vegas, Helping Hands of Vegas Valley and the Nevada Division of Aging and Disability Services.

“There are so many other services that our seniors need so they’re not isolated, so they’re not homebound,” said Bobby, adding the city does help deliver hot Meals On Wheels to 300 homebound city seniors daily. “There are people who have not been isolated, who have not gone on the homebound meal because we’ve been able to pick them up.”

The RTC delivers 465 riders per month to Heritage Park through its twice-a-week Silver STAR program, a loop route off its regular route. The commission is studying extending a fixed route to Heritage Park, but that would not happen until October if it happened at all, according to Perrin A. Palistrant, the transportation agency’s transit operations planner. The route currently runs on Palo Verde Drive off Burkholder, nearly a mile north of Heritage Park.

“(Senior transportation) is very important,” Laborie said. “You have too many people who don’t have enough family. They’re really lost without it.”

Contact reporter Arnold M. Knightly at aknightly@reviewjournal.com or 702-477-3882. Follow him on Twitter: @KnightlyGrind