Duke Energy donates $70K to North Florida senior center as storm recovery continues

Duke Energy Florida is donating $70,000 to the Jefferson County Senior Citizens Center in Monticello. The North Florida center serves nearly 50 seniors in person and provides in-home services to more than a dozen others.

Donated funds will help the center begin the recovery process after severe storms swept through North Florida, including the Tallahassee area and surrounding suburbs and exurbs, where Monticello is located.

“The Florida Council on Aging is enormously grateful to Duke Energy for their ongoing partnership with our members, and especially so for this tremendously impactful donation to the seniors of Jefferson County,” Florida Council on Aging Executive Director Margaret Lynn Duggar said.

“Duke Energy was not only generous, but also quick in their response. Senior centers offer socialization, which we now know is essential to older persons’ actual health, and also to their nutrition through the meals served, and to their access to critical information and connection to other needed services.”

Duke Energy Florida, with the Florida Council on aging, is hosting a press conference Monday afternoon at the center to discuss further details. The facility is located at 1155 N. Jefferson St. in Monticello.

Sen. Corey Simon, Rep. Allison Tant, Jefferson County Sheriff Alfred Kenneth McNeil Jr. and Jefferson County Senior Citizens Center Director Mazi Glenn will join a representative from the Florida Department of Elder Affairs and local County Commissioners to tout the donation at 2 p.m.

The center helps seniors with meals and utility bills and offers a place for them to socialize. The building, however, suffered severe damage during the storms earlier this month, displacing those who rely on services.

“Senior centers are lifesavers for many older adults,” Duggar added. “Duke Energy has demonstrated through this donation that they know this. FCOA also recognizes and appreciates the outstanding work Rep. Allison Tant has done for elders throughout her district during this tragic set of storms that impacted the Big Bend region.”

The storms, which swept through the region Mother’s Day weekend inflicting tornado, wind and hail damage, prompted Gov. Ron DeSantis to activate the National Guard and declare a state of emergency in 15 counties, including Baker, Columbia, Gadsden, Hamilton, Jefferson, Lafayette, Leon, Liberty, Madison, Suwannee, Taylor and Wakulla.

Nearly 200,000 homes, businesses and other facilities were without power, some for several days.

At least one woman in Florida died after a tree fell on her family’s home, the Leon County Sheriff’s Office told the Associated Press. Hers was at least the fourth death from heavy weather this week; two people were killed in Tennessee on Wednesday, when another storm death was reported in North Carolina.