Volunteer Airdrie Society came to council on March 18 with a business relationship proposal that includes financial assistance for the Drive Happiness Seniors Assisted Transportation Program.
The request included council invest a portion of its 2024 transit budget, in the amount of $73,000.
The Drive Happiness Seniors Association has assisted Volunteer Airdrie (VA) in providing a transportation program since 2021 for the disabled and senior population of Airdrie.
Volunteer drivers are currently being reimbursed about $0.24 per kilometre (km), while the CRA mileage rate for 2024 was $0.70 for the first 5,000 km and $0.64 per km thereafter.
“We’re not asking the City of Airdrie for that reimbursement, what we are asking for is the ability to compensate our drivers for the wear and tear on their vehicles, which if you net the fuel off equates to about $0.40 to $0.46 per km,” said Dave Maffitt, the chair of VA.
Airdrie’s CAO, Horacio Galanti, said opening communication between administration and VA would be a great first step.
Council directed administration to work with VA and their Drive Happiness program and to return to council with options to further the program’s success.
Maffitt hopes any funding from the City would help them recruit drivers for the program, as he fears volunteer burnout.
“We found over the past three or four years that there is a significant gap with respect to getting to medical appointments that are only available in the City of Calgary,” said Maffitt.
Transportation to medical appointments in Calgary were identified as Airdrie’s biggest need.
In February 134 out of 170 trips made by Drive Happiness were for hemodialysis at one of the Calgary hospitals, something that is not available in Airdrie, according to Maffitt. Hemodialysis is used to filter and cleanse the blood for people with kidney failure while they wait for a kidney transplant, a treatment that’s needed every other day.
Other services they’ve needed transportation for is radiation and chemotherapy.
The second need VA identified is a door to inside door transportation service, which provides assistance to get people with mobility issues in and out of their house and into the vehicle. VA has been able to book this service on short notice and 24/7.
The third need identified was affordability, which Maffitt felt was the most important.
Lots of clients are elderly and on old age pensions. The alternative for them is to take a taxi or Uber at roughly $40 to $100 each way to get to a Calgary hospital.
“These people cannot afford that, especially the dialysis people that are going three times per week,” Maffitt said. “We offer the service for $20 each way.”
VA started the transportation program in Airdrie in March 2020 and partnered with the Drive Happiness Seniors Association a year later, an organization providing the same service for over 20 years.
Drive Happiness offers its scheduling software free of charge, as well as handles all volunteer screening, rider registrations, scheduling, collection of ticket revenue, and payment to drivers for fuel. Their annual budget to offer these services to communities in Alberta is $750,000, funded by several organizations including the federal and provincial government.
Since partnering with Drive Happiness in March 2021, the program in Airdrie has completed 2,848 appointments and travelled approximately 175,000 km. They currently have 220 clients and 28 registered volunteer drivers.
An information session to recruit volunteers for the Drive Happiness program will be held on March 24 at Good Earth Coffeehouse and the Airdrie Public Library.
New Volunteer Airdrie Chair steps up
Daria Skibington-Roffel will be joining Volunteer Airdrie as chair at the next Annual General Meeting.
Maffitt and Volunteer Airdrie’s vice chair both planned to step down this year and are currently working on a succession plan.
Upon hearing of Maffitt’s plan to step down, Skibington-Roffel immediately offered her involvement, Maffitt said. She was an initial proponent of starting the organization and has been volunteering in Airdrie for many years, including with Volunteer Airdrie, Airdrie Lioness Club, the Airdrie Horticultural Society, Airdrie P.O.W.E.R. and the Airdrie and District Hospice Society.
She also served as a crisis/victim advocate for the Airdrie and District Victims Assistance Society from 2007 until 2017.
She was no stranger to Airdrie’s council members on March 18 and they said they looked forward to working with her in the future as part of VA.
