SENT Topeka is reducing operating hours at its Southside filling station.
By Carson Shea
Published: Jul. 8, 2026 at 7:15 PM
TOPEKA, Kan. (WIBW) – SENT Topeka is reducing operating hours at its Southside filling station.
Federal funding for the Senior Community Service Employment Program has been paused, forcing the pantry to only open on Thursdays for the rest of July.
“We need this,” one customer Debuse Onofrio said. “Not just me, everybody that comes in here. It’s not like we’re hoarding, we’re counting beans on our plate. And to take it away, that’s unacceptable.”
Without the furloughed workers, the food pantry doesn’t have the manpower to serve its full hours.
“There was a furlough on employees due to a pause in federal funds for the program,” SENT Executive Director Johnathan Sublet said. “So our local administrator had to tell those locally who are employees through that program that they were not able to come back to work after last Thursday.”
600 families rely on it weekly.
“This just, I can breathe again,” Onofrio said. “I can breathe again. and have more food in my house than I did, and I’m not counting every penny. So this extends my budget and keeping me going.”
But the furlough is affecting those community members.
“Instead of having open pantry days two days a week, it’ll cut us down to open pantry days one day a week,” Sublet said. “So you can start imagining 300 or so families might be affected by that.”
Sublet says the program is just as important for the senior citizen employees.
“So it’s good for everyone to have fruitful and meaningful employment,” he said. “Everybody wants to feel like they’re significant and have dignity and so our employment is a part of what helps us to feel that way.”
Sublet says he hired two senior employees full-time during last year’s furlough but he doesn’t have the funds to do it again this time.
He also adds that he is unsure when the furlough will end.
Federal offices tell 13 NEWS the program is fully funded, although records show it received about $10 million less this year.
We are awaiting a response from state agencies on whether that affected what they awarded individual organizations.