By J. Graber | Scottsdale Independent
A substantial portion of Scottsdale’s residents are preparing to retire, according to a new report from financial services website SmartAsset.
Approximately 15.49% of Scottsdale’s population is between the ages of 55 and 64. In raw numbers that’s 37,655 people out of a population of just over 243,000.
That’s a high enough percentage to put Scottsdale at fifth place in a list of 344 cities across the country, but it leaves Scottsdale Human Services Director Greg Bestgen a little amazed.
“I guess it sounds low actually,” Bestgen said. “We’re one of the top five cities in the country with a population of 65 or older (per capita). I mean we have the highest number of folks in that age range for any city over 100,000.”
The point is Scottsdale is continuing to age and as residents do so, they tend to use more city services, Bestgen said.
They tend to use the parks more, they go to the city’s two senior centers as well as the city’s two neighborhood centers.
And that translates into cost for the city.
The two senior centers (Granite Reef, which opened in 2006, and Via Linda, which opened in 1996), were built with voter approved bond money and cost almost $1.2 million to operate in this fiscal year.
The city’s human service department’s budget is $19.2 million this year but most of that is salaries said Human Services manager Rachel Smetana. “Human services is actually not a very flush department,” she said.
The human services department has all sorts of services for seniors. There are brown bag food programs, congregant meal programs and emergency case management for folks.
“Sometimes people will come to get familiar with the city and then dementia or other things set in so we can connect people with the Area Agency on Aging or other services they need,” Smetana said.
Trained social workers have provided 400 instances of case management at the city’s two senior centers and another 60 for people 65 or older at the Paiute Neighborhood Center in the last year.
Read more (subscriber content)
Some stories may only appear as partial reprints because of publisher restrictions.