Helen Maley, 84, of Donegal Township holds up a button reading “Save our Seniors” at the Chicora senior center. Maley said, “A friend had these buttons made up for us to save our senior center in Chicora.” A possible change in the way Butler County's 10 senior centers operate has many seniors upset.

Don’t call it consolidation, said Beth Herold, administrator of the Butler County Area Agency on Aging. Call it enhancing and streamlining services.

Whatever it’s called, the possibility of changing the operations at the county’s 10 senior centers has senior citizens upset and worried.

“What’s prompting this is we want to be able to serve as many people over 60 at the centers, offering a variety of activities,” said Herold. “We want to see what the needs are and what barriers are keeping seniors from coming.”

Herold said attendance has plateaued at some centers and is decreasing in others.

Herold said the county needs to address these attendance issues.

“We’re not attracting the younger senior citizens,” she said, adding the interests and needs of a 60- to 75-year-old are different from those of an 80- to 85-year-old.

Noting the county spends $720,000 annually on the centers, Herold said, “I want to make sure what funding I am putting into the centers is serving as many individuals as possible with a variety of programs.”

She said one of the many options under consideration is having two main centers, one at the Cranberry Township Municipal Building and a second in Butler on transit routes while the other centers would be open up to three days a week as satellite locations.

“There would be different programs in the hubs than might be supported in a rural site,” Herold said.

But seniors are worried about the futures of their centers.

Louise Snow, 93, who has been a resident of Penn Mar Plaza in Mars for nine years, said she comes to the senior center on the high-rise’s first floor to take part in the Silver Sneakers exercise class three times a week and yoga sessions once a week.

Snow said, “We play cards, we have singalongs. We keep busy here. I enjoy the companionship with the other people here.

“I like everything about it,” she said of the Mars senior center. “I wouldn’t want to have to go out and go to Cranberry. It’s right here for me and I enjoy it. I don’t go out in the bad weather because I’m afraid of falling.”

Sylvia Callendar, 88, of Butler said, “I come most every day depending on the weather.”

Asked what she liked about the Butler senior center, Callendar said, “Everything. It gets me out. I don’t have to cook when I come here. And there are very nice people.”

She doesn’t like the talk about closing or moving centers.

Calendar said, “We are used to what is going on here, and old people don’t like change. It doesn’t seem fair to uproot us.”

Herold said any changes would have to be discussed by the agency board and then by the county commissioners during the next several months.

“We will most likely have a public forum that people can come to,” she said before any change is made.