After retiring from a career that included working as a nurse and elder law attorney, Carol Applegate is ready to serve seniors in a new way.
She is co-chairing the newly launched Mayor’s Advisory Commission on Senior Living, which is designed to enhance the quality of life for Carmel’s older residents. The commission is set to hold its first meeting at 5:30 p.m. Aug. 28 at Carmel City Hall. Meetings are open to the public.
“When you stop and look at the services that we now provide (for seniors) there are several, but we’re at a basic level right now, and I’d like to see that raised to a higher level of being able to provide better services and more services to our senior population,” Applegate said. “Especially since COVID, our seniors have suffered a great deal of depression, loneliness and feeling isolated, and we really need to put an emphasis on allowing those seniors to be a part of this community and feel like they are community and still have a contribution to make. They can make this community better.”
Carmel City Councilor Rich Taylor co-chairs the commission. He said he and fellow first-term councilor Matt Snyder and now-Mayor Sue Finkam recognized a need for increased focus on senior issues during their 2023 campaigns for office and began brainstorming ways to address it.
“We’ve focused on a lot of other groups of constituents in the community, but I felt like seniors were sort of left behind. (Many of) these community members have invested in our city for decades,” Taylor said. “This community hasn’t been a focus, necessarily, of some of the activities of the city for a long time, and there are a lot of needs that we’ve identified that we could help support or address.”
Some of the focus areas identified by Applegate or Taylor include housing options, expanded lifelong learning opportunities and a shortage of caregivers.
“Our senior population has such a bundle of knowledge and different life experiences, and those life experiences can be shared with others,” Applegate said. “(There’s a) challenge of making our seniors feel like they are a part (of the community) and they can stay here, even though Carmel is changing and growing. They can stay here and they can be comfortable and they can improve our community.”
Commission membership is expected to be finalized later this month, according to a city spokesperson. Learn more about the commission by contacting the mayor’s office at 317-571-2401.
