Irene Hathaway has been visiting the Lillian D. Green Nutrition Center in Troy for more than six years now. She says it provides her with the one big meal a day.

Irene Hathaway, a Troy resident, says, "This helps because it gives me a good meal a day, it gives me my fruit and it gives us other things that we need."

Hathaway is among many 60 and older senior citizens that take advantage of the nutrition program. Seniors pay a fee of only 75 cents per meal and are provided with a nutritious and healthy meal. Something Assistant Manager of the Nutrition Center, Myrtle Renfroe, says benefits many.

Renfroe says, "It helps a lot of people because a lot of them are on fixed incomes and social security."

While that's been good to them, the economy hasn't, causing food prices to increase.

Mayor Jimmy Lunsford of the City of Troy says, "The cost of the meals went up, therefore with no increase in funding meal prices going up, we stood to lose several thousand meals for the year."

Mayor of Troy, Jimmy Lunsford says it is too important to lose such a wonderful program. That's why he says the city dipped into its budget to make up the difference in costs.

Mayor Lunsford says, "Our seniors are so important to us and means so much to us that we've got to be able to support those programs and support our seniors."

Hathaway says, "They did take care of us and it's wonderful that we have a city that will do that."

Mayor Lunsford says the nutrition center will continue to hold strong until the next fiscal year which picks up October of 2009. By then, we can only hope that the economy will have turned around.

Thanks to the help from the city, Mayor Jimmy Lunsford says the center will be able to serve thousands of hot meals.