One of the many priorities that administration of the Cass County COA shares is a commitment to staying on the cutting edge when it comes to the services it provides to county residents.

While attending a recent daylong conference in Chicago on the future of senior centers, COA chief executive officer Bob Cochrane received affirmation that his agency was more than fulfilling this challenging aspiration. Describing one of the talks given at the seminar, Cochrane was mentally taking note of all the activities and programs the speaker described as the “vanguard, the bleeding edge” of things agencies can do for their 21st Century communities — things his organizations is already doing, he said.

“Almost 80 percent of the things they said ‘here’s what the leading groups are doing,’ I said, ‘yep, we do those things,” Cochrane said. “And we do more on top of that.”

The local administrator shared this story during his annual report of the Cass County COA’s activities to the Cass County Board of Commissioners, during its regular meeting last week in Cassopolis. Cochrane told the commissioners and the others in attendance about the growth the local agency has experienced in the past year, along with information about some of the new services they have implemented in recent months.

Among the highlights of Cochrane’s report were:

• More than 17,000 hours of assistance was given to area seniors through the COA’s in-home respite service program. Another 17,000 worth of hours was provided through the agency’s adult day services.

• Nearly 1,300 people were given 37,000 meals from the COA’s kitchen, either served in-house from one of the agency’s two locations or through their meals-on-wheels program.

• More than 300 people received assistance from staff in signing up for Medicare/Medicaid.

• More than 380 participated in the eight support groups provided through the agency.

• Around 12,000 visits occurred at each of the COA’s two fitness centers.

One of the other successes that Cochrane celebrated was the popularity of the COA’s tax return program, with volunteers spending 841 hours preparing 371 forms for area residents, Cochrane said.

“That brings thousands of dollars back to Cass County, in terms of refunds received,” he said. “We’re really happy about that.”

Despite these achievements, the COA was in the red by the time the year was done, running around a $200,000 deficit, Cochrane said.

The CEO closed his report by discussing his organization’s most valuable resource: the contributions from local volunteers. Nearly 300 residents helped out the organization throughout last year, devoting over 25,000 hours of volunteer service to seniors and other members of the Cass County community, Cochrane said.

“If we didn’t have all those volunteers we would have to severely cut back on what we do,” he said. “We can’t go out and get 15 more people to work for us.”