”
Save our senior center! Save our senior center!
”
More than 100 seniors citizens protested this morning just
beyond the doors of their beloved senior center on West Edmundson
Avenue
– $37,500 was on their minds and since the news that the city
may cut half of the senior center’s budget, its loyal customers
have been a mix of angry and upset.
“Save our senior center! Save our senior center!”
More than 100 seniors citizens protested this morning just beyond the doors of their beloved senior center on West Edmundson Avenue – $37,500 was on their minds and since the news that the city may cut half of the senior center’s budget, its loyal customers have been a mix of angry and upset.
“It’s very frustrating. It makes me angry. This is a place for me to come and interact, do crafts, eat lunch,” senior citizen Lucinda Korver said. She said it was too bad the cuts will run so deep at the senior center, a place that city council members will have wished they could enjoy “for their own old age.”
Their choir of protest songs and rally cries – the senior citizens hoped – were heard miles away at Morgan Hill city hall. The proposed elimination of $37,500 from the senior center budget is about half its total funding.
Residents John Tarvin and his wife Linda organized the protest.
“It’s really going to hurt these guys,” Tarvin said.
Inside the senior center following the protest lunch was served as always and the dining room was bustling with music and conversation.
“I’m very disturbed. This is a way for the seniors to get out of the house, to get a good meal, to exercise their body and mind,” said Julia Starling, a volunteer at the senior center. Starling is an active volunteer in the area and felt that seniors had paid their dues.
“We’re worth our weight in gold,” Starling said. “We’ve paid our taxes, we’ve paid into Social Security. We need you now. We were there (paying taxes) for so many years. We did our part, now do yours.”
The affect would be great to the senior center’s programs. The list of services that will be eliminated if the budget proposal passes July 1 include movie matinees, Wii bowling, watercolor classes, golf lessons, haircuts, line dancing, Bingo, several photography courses, needlework classes, sing-a-longs, SJSU and Gavilan College internship program, dementia caregivers training. Also, the center’s hours will be reduced from seven hours daily to five.
The seniors vowed at the protest today to attend the city council meeting June 1 when the council will hold a public hearing about the budget. One woman announced to the crowd, “We must show them we care! Go to the meeting June 1!”
One way to save the senior center programs and staff, Tarvin suggested, is to add $1 per month to memberships at the city’s CRC and Aquatics Center. There are currently 3,182 membership units, including family memberships, at the facilities, and Tarvin noted that an extra dollar added to each $80 monthly membership fee could easily subsidize the senior center.
The services that may be eliminated or reduced are those that do not generate revenue or are the least-used services. In Morgan Hill, there are about 5,000 residents age 65 and older and the senior center reports about 40,000 visits by individual seniors last year or almost half of total Community Recreation Center visits in 2009.
John Camisa and his wife Bonnie congregate with friends who they have known for 40 years at the senior center.
“For many people this is the most social place they have,” Camisa said while enjoying lunch today. The Camisa began visiting the senior center shortly after it opened at its new location in October 2006. He said he most values the computer classes – “to lose that is horrible from a mental gymnastics perspective.”
Such a critical part of keeping seniors fit mentally is done through conversation, playing cards, singing and using the computers.
“It’s a great place. You don’t see many grumps in here. Most people are smiling,” Camisa said. *”We’re very congenial. We enjoy a good joke now and then.”
