Williams Foundation directors met with the Milam County Commissioners Court on Monday proposing to give Milam County the building, land, equipment and $150,000 a year, for at least five years, in exchange for operating the senior center.
“I think it’s a great deal, and a great public service,” said Dr. Frank Summers, Milam County judge. “We are going to do whatever we can to figure out a way to get this done. It is not going to cost the county anything. This will go to help all the senior programs across the county.”
Milam County wants to work with the Hill Country Community Action Association to have the Rockdale Senior Center help manage Bea’s Kitchen’s meals program, which would serve senior centers throughout the county, Summers said.
Established in 1998, the Williams Foundation is a private charity designed to promote the betterment of the couple’s hometown of Cameron. Current directors are William Elliott and his daughter, Amy Elliott Op of Onalaska and Mike Zajicek of Cameron.
“The Williams Foundation is restricted within the city limits of Cameron,” Elliott said.
The organization, as with all private foundations, is required by federal regulations to give 5 percent of the average net growth in grants, Elliott said.
“When you own property, it generates no income, but you have to give 5 percent of that value out in grants,” Elliott said. “The ideal situation is you should own no property. The Williams Foundation is in the process now of trying to dissolve itself of any property it owns.”
Ownership of Bea’s Kitchen requires the foundation to give out $20,000 additional grants each year, in addition to administrative costs for operating the senior center, Elliott said.
“The fact that it’s a foundation operating a charity, we do not have a vehicle that we can take care of our administrative costs for Bea’s Kitchen, such as the salaries of the cooks, and the utilities,” Elliott said. “The only thing we can claim as grants is the actual food, so we have a tremendous amount of administrative costs that have to be absorbed by The Williams Foundation.”
A better situation, directors reasoned, would be to transfer ownership and operations to an existing entity, and they opted to ask Milam County because of its proximity with the center. Had Milam County not been receptive to the proposal, the board would have pursued other entities.
Summers is devising a plan for the county to operate and maintain the center “at, or better than it is now, and that has the potential for growth, and we are real excited about it,” Elliott said.
“The county judge has demanded that there would be no changes in operation. The food will be exactly the same, and they want to keep their same management,” he said.
Bea’s Kitchen opened nine years ago and was named after Beatrice Williams, and served more than 30,000 lunches last year.
jwilliams@temple-telegram.com
