Pasco’s longtime senior services charity continues to shrink

For a half century, the Pasco County charity Community Aging & Retirement Services Inc. provided a full menu of social services for the county’s elderly.

Last year financial troubles cost the agency its $4.3 million contract to be the lead provider for the county’s in-home care, health services, meals, adult day care and other essential resources to low-income senior citizens. Pasco County stepped in to take over that service.

In May the nonprofit better known as CARES notified the regional overseer of such programs that it had decided to withdraw from providing the smaller service program “after much review and consideration.” That program provided homemaker, chore and adult daycare services.

That announcement came just as CARES was trying to sort out how to deal with a notice it had received that a $162,000 loan had come due, according to records it sent to the Area Agency on Aging of Pasco-Pinellas, Inc., the regional agency which oversees services for seniors.

CARES Chief Executive Officer Kristin Amato wrote to the Area Agency on Aging regarding that loan saying that it “is part of our bankruptcy.”

She noted that the previous executive director, Jemith Rosa, had taken out a payroll loan. “We had our legal council look at all of the documents and apparently she also signed a personal guarantee to this loan unbeknownst to any of us,” Amato wrote.

“I know I have said this several times, the damage she has caused to CARES is irreversible. Please know each day we continue as a team to do our best to service the seniors despite all that we are facing,” Amato wrote.

Last week was the deadline for other organizations to submit proposals for the services that CARES had determined it could not complete.

After the notice that CARES was financially unable to provide that service, the Area Agency decided to cancel a separate small state-funded homemaker service contract for about 100 clients that CARES had retained as well. In conversations with CARES officials, the Area Agency learned that they would not be able to make payroll after May 31.

As of the start of July, “all seniors impacted by that agreement have been shifted to other homemaking vendors in the area,” said Ann Marie Winter, executive director of the Area Agency on Aging.

Earlier this month, Pasco County ended its $20,000 annual grant to CARES to provide several programs through the Elfers Senior Center, including its annual “senior prom” festivities, classic car shows and fine arts shows.

According to Brian Hoben, the county’s director of community services, when Pasco picked up much of CARES’s work last year, it did not have a place to keep all the staff involved in that contract in one place. After CARES vacates its operations center next month, county staff will be able to move in.

Having the county in charge of that site also means that it can soon become the fifth congregate care dining program for Pasco. Prior to the pandemic, there had been another senior dining program near the Southgate Shopping Center but it closed and never reopened.

Amato said that some of the programs offered by CARES at Elfers will now move up to the charity’s Hudson office on Clock Tower Parkway. She also said that CARES has been trying to work with the county and the Area Agency on Aging to make sure that every client that had been served before will continue to get services.

Winter said that was also her agency’s goal.

In 2023, CARES lost their lead agency contract through the Area Agency after spending more than it had been awarded and making several questionable financial moves. Those included selling its Dade City daycare location to its then-chairperson and asking board members to dig into their own pockets to make payroll.

Several board members quit and the nonprofit’s troubles continued when it lost an offer from a developer to provide a new senior center in Central Pasco.

Late last year, CARES closed its senior center in Dade City, the building sold to its chairman of the board. Pasco County is working with CARES now to take over ownership and complete a nearby building on land donated by Wilton Simpson, the state’s agriculture commissioner and former state senator. The county hopes to acquire the building next month, said Cathy Pearson, assistant county administrator for public services.

The county received a $1.5 million allocation from the state legislature this year to finish construction of the new building.