The Marion County Board of Supervisors approved recreating the Elderly Nutrition Department during their regular meeting yesterday morning. The program is currently under the wing of Marion County Public Health, which is very unusual. It had been its own department in the past, but was shifted into Public Health’s domain around a decade ago after a previous administrator had left.

Senior Nutrition Manager Dawn Allspach and Public Health Director Kim Dorn said that they had already discussed many of the duties to ensure that Allspach would be ready to take over the department individually. No extra jobs will be created through the split, and Allspach said that she estimated that it would only add 1-2 hours a month to her workload.

The Supervisors voted 2-1 to approve the creation of the new department; Sam Nichols voted against it, saying that he wasn’t against the concept, but he wanted more of the details and big picture plans in writing before approving the spilt. Senior Nutrition will become its own county department effective July 1st.