TRURO — Truro Council on Aging Outreach Coordinator Elton Cutler’s going-away party on Jan. 6 brought out over 80 people. Not only were they sad to see him go, they were worried about the future of the COA.

“Elton knew what was going on in all respects,” said Mike Berlin, who attends exercise classes two or three times a week at the center. From information about transportation to researching funeral possibilities to offering help with technology, Elton “really knew all the questions that people had,” Berlin said. “And recently, until he left, he was the sole person sitting in the building.”

Staffing problems at the Truro COA began several months before the pandemic when Susan Travers, the director since 2009, resigned in 2019, said Joan Holt, who is 88. Her husband, Bob, is 105.

Travers’s replacement, Mary-Elizabeth Briscoe, was hired in December 2019. The COA was closed to in-person services soon afterward, in March 2020. Briscoe resigned in November 2021.

The position of COA director is still unfilled. Town Manager Darrin Tangeman said there was a departmental reorganization last spring in which the recreation dept. and council on aging directors’ jobs were reclassified as deputy director positions, with a community services director overseeing them. After that, two rounds of job searches took place, yielding a new COA deputy director finalist. Tangeman expects to announce a new hire any day now, he said.

It is badly needed to counter a tide of recent resignations.

In September, COA office assistant Chelsea Micks left for a similar administrative assistant job at the Wellfleet Adult Community Center, leaving Cutler as the last staff member whom seniors could find in the COA portion of the Truro Community Center. Now Cutler is gone, too. He has taken a job as the Brewster Council on Aging director.

In December, the COA also lost the chef who prepared Friday lunches, and the town is advertising for a part-time van driver and an on-call van driver, said Damion Clements, Truro’s community services director, by email.

Micks refused to say why she left Truro for a similar job in Wellfleet. All Cutler would say was that he had applied for the director’s position when Rae Ann Palmer was the town manager and Palmer hired Briscoe instead. As the outreach coordinator for eight years, Cutler was encouraged to apply for the deputy director’s position, said Tangeman. But Cutler said he declined because he had been passed over before.

Joan Moriarty, a member of the Friends of the COA board, said she knows why everyone is quitting: as others leave, more work gets piled on those who stay.

“The receptionist quit because she was doing the job of three people, and then everything was on one person,” Moriarty said. “It is just a mess.”

“We are desperate to have a fully working COA,” Holt said. Seniors like her and her husband need more help, not less; yet it seems as if the Truro town administration is short-changing the growing elderly population.

“I get it — from the outside I can see why people are upset about things,” said Dan Schreiner, chair of the COA board. But, he said, there has been a lot of work behind the scenes to hire new staff and to improve services.

The board recently held focus groups that yielded a raft of suggestions, like re-opening the COA on Mondays. It has been closed Mondays since the pandemic. Other suggestions include offering more activities and services for home-bound elders, expanding transportation services, having classes on cell phone use, setting up a mini gym, offering cooking-for-one classes, and bringing in a volunteer coordinator.

Clements said he has been acting as the COA director for a year as community services director. In Cutler’s absence, the Outer Cape Health Services Community Navigator program will help connect seniors with immediate services short-term, Clements stated by email. (He refused to answer questions by phone.)

In his email, Clements stated that none of the services that existed in 2019 have been cut. There is still chair yoga, Core & More, the Dr. Campo foot clinic, men’s exercise, Move & Stretch, a needlework group, pickleball clinics, strength training, ukulele lessons, white line open studio, and a mail and food delivery program. Even with just one part-time van driver, the COA stills offers all its usual rides to medical appointments, Clements stated.

To bring in more van drivers, the town has raised the pay to $24 an hour, $8 an hour more than before, Tangeman said.

“Believe me, we are working on it,” Tangeman added. “I spent about 30 percent of my week last week working on the COA staffing.”