Community Corner
Board Pressed to Act on Senior Center Renovations
Mayor John Watras said the board is waiting to hear results of the community-wide Recreation and Parks needs assessment survey.
When the village board appointed bond counsel at its June 6 meeting it prompted several senior citizens to question why there's been no forward progress on the proposed Golf Club Lane senior center expansion project.
Trustees voted 8-0 to engage Hawkins, Delafield & Wood, LLP, to provide legal counsel in connection with bond issues for the ensuing year.
Seventh Street resident Joe Leto asked whether this action included the senior center renovations. "Is that one of the issues in the bond? Is that included in the bond application?" he asked.
Mayor John Watras, who assured many frustrated seniors last month that the board hasn't forgotten about them and the improvements they've been waiting for, told Leto that the appointment was not tied to any specific projects.
"We're not talking about specific bond issues at all. We're just strictly appointing counsel," Watras said. "We're not being very specific at this point."
Leto replied, "When will you be specific?"
The expansion project is expected to cost approximately $630,000, which will be bonded.
A Hamilton Place resident who plays bridge at the center added, "You had promised you would have an answer to the senior center expansion. You said you would have something by the end of [May]. The month is over. This is June. There has been nothing."
The resident stressed that the current facility doesn't provide enough room for more than one group at a time, causing the acoustics to spill over. "You can't have more than one group in the senior center at one time," she said. "I just wanted to stress the importance. It was lost in all the conversations I've heard. We don't have an adequate amount of room."
Mayor Watras said the board is waiting to hear the results of the community-wide Recreation and Parks needs assessment survey, which was mailed to residents in April. The questionnaire was intended to give residents an opportunity to express "individual needs, attitudes, opinions and behaviors toward village leisure services and facilities." The Department of Recreation and Parks scheduled eight individual one-hour focus group meetings to allow residents the chance to help in the questionnaire's formation in February.
Kevin Ocker, chair of the board of commissioners of cultural and recreational affairs, said consultants are expected to present survey results at a June 24 meeting at village hall. "This will help us plan to go forward," he said.
"Key words 'plan to go forward,'" Watras added. "We're just looking for parameters at this particular point."
Garden City Retired Men’s Club co-president George Salem, who called out former Eastern Property Owners' Association president Judy Courtney and trustee Nick Episcopia at the May 7 meeting on being "most vocal" in their opposition to the project, said it's always "tomorrow wait for this thing, wait for that thing."
Roxbury Road resident Claire Burns urged the board to move forward because time is short. "It can't be all about the children. We are here also," Burns, who moved to Garden City with her family at age 4, said. "The senior center is totally inadequate, dirty and deteriorating daily ... Please, please don't fail us."
Rosemary Brown said she and her husband moved to this village not only for the "excellent school system" but also for the "great recreational program that was already in place 45 years ago."
"My husband and I have always, for 45 years, supported anything and everything that was for the good of our children in this community. However, we all grow older and I have to admit I am now older and we have a senior center that is so pathetic in this village that we should all be ashamed of what we have. I don't understand why two years ago we started talking about building a new senior center in this village and we were told all sorts of stories and it's still going nowhere."
Mayor Watras assured the board would get back to residents on the issue.
Brown thought it was just "another story." "You guys are starting to sound like Washington," she said.
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