[quote_box_right]MMCC will host a free briefing on “The Dangers of Long-Term Opioid Usage by Seniors,” March 22 at 2-4 p.m., at the Copper Sky Police Substation Community Conference Room. Presented by the Pinal-Gila Council for Seniors, it will cover both consequences and alternatives and will be appropriate for both seniors and caregivers. Light refreshments will be available.[/quote_box_right]

Maricopa Multi Cultural Consortium (MMCC) provides educational programs important to senior needs and is working toward providing venues where seniors can gather and receive services.

MMCC exists to fill gaps in the City’s vision, plans and actions and to stir the pot to make things move in directions that are important to Maricopans in general. We are successful when our pot-stirring is effective, when those gaps get filled.

In recent times, MMCC has been asking the City:

  • To staff a person to coordinate the landing of national, state and regional senior services in our city so seniors don’t have to go to Casa Grande or Florence. The good news is City Manager Rick Horst and Community Services Director Nathan Ullyot have hired a senior-focused staff member, Brandelyn Baumhefner, to work on this issue.
  • For an increased focus on seniors at Copper Sky, especially when Copper Sky’s resources are underutilized during hours when commuters are out of town and when many parents are helping their kids with homework. Ullyot has a bunch of new concepts at the idea stage.
  • For some sort of senior center or a set of variously focused senior centers, perhaps a combination of physical and virtual/online centers, opportunistically using existing resources because of low levels of available funding. Horst, City Councilmember Nancy Smith, Age-Friendly Committee Chair Joan Koczor and County Supervisor Anthony Smith have responded at their levels and we have some excellent ideas in the pipeline, including a possible path to augment Copper Sky’s possible senior fitness center with a senior social center (with hot meals and social activities) in a city building currently being used for other things.

MMCC’s original goal was to create a community center with multi-focused, multi-generation, multi-cultural resources for people to come together to have a wide variety of events that are larger than somebody’s living room, more open than someone’s church, and lower cost than some commercial establishment.

Within the context of an eventual community center goal, MMCC down-focused its first project focusing on the group’s first and highest priority – seniors and Maricopa’s growth-killing embarrassment of being one of the only cities in Arizona without a senior center.

Ted Yocum, MMCC President
Bob Marsh, MMCC Treasurer
Al Brandenburg, MMCC Secretary

[email protected]

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