January 31, 2006

PRNS working to save community centers

By Carol Rosen
Editor

Recent dire fears that the city was in the process of beginning to close various senior and community centers were greatly exaggerated. In fact, the opposite is true. The Department of Parks, Recreation and Neighborhood Services in doing its best to save the 32 senior and community centers throughout San Jose.

The Willows Senior Center on Lincoln Avenue is a haven for seniors. Classes, games and entertainment are the main features. In order to save its 32 community center sites, because of budget restrictions, the city’s Parks, Recreation and Neighborhood Services Department is working on a re-use strategy that will use non-profit partners to run some of the centers.

“The last thing we want to do is close these centers,” said Maria Hurtado, deputy director of Community Services for PRNS. “We didn’t anticipate the downturn in the economy and we will continue to see budget cuts for the next couple of years. Our desire is to be creative and not close these centers. We’ve determined that we can partner with agencies and schools to run these centers.

In 2001-02, the PRNS staffing level for these centers was at its peak at 149 full-time equivalent (FTE) employees with an annual budget from the General Fund of about $10 million. This year, 2005-06, the staff has been cut to 75 FTEs with a $6 million budget allocation.

It’s nearly impossible to run the number of facilities PRNS currently has in service with that tiny budget.

“It is necessary in order to preserve the usefulness and community service character of our community center sites and to minimize the impact of the facilities closures,” to develop a facilities re-use strategy, according to the PRNS proposal to the City Council.

The strategy is that during the fiscal crisis with the resultant decrease in resources, the city can rely on partnerships with schools, agencies and the community. In other words, third party non-profits have expressed interest in expanding services through use of some of the city’s community centers.

“It’s the last [and best] alternative to closure,” said Hurtado. “No one wants to see any of our community or senior centers close. The goal is to ensure a fair and open process with opportunities for stakeholder involvement providing the maximum benefit to the city.”

New idea
It’s a brand new idea, “no other city has done this,” she added. In order to make the project work and to make it work more easily, PRNS determined five phases that are necessary to make the plan happen.

The first phase, is facility selection and assessment. This phase assessed the condition of the 32 sites looking at the centers to determine what, if any, costs would be necessary to bring them up to Americans with Disability Act standards and/or what system upgrades are needed; i.e. heaters.

The second phase, which began in January and will be concluded this month, consists of community meetings to determine the importance of these centers to the community. Residents of these areas are being asked to tell task force representatives why their centers are important.

The task force, according to the PRNS plan, is to include a broad cross section of city and community representatives.
The representatives will attend the community sessions to have multiple opportunities to derive community input.

Broad membership
Task force members include representatives from PRNS; the library; youth, senior and disability commissions; project area committees from the Strong Neighborhood Initiative, United Way; San Jose State; General Services, the business community; the Community Foundation of Silicon Valley; a union representative; faith-based organizations; and school districts.

There will be a meeting for District 6 sites on Monday, Feb. 6 from 6 to 8 p.m. at Sherman Oaks Community Center 1800A Fruitdale Ave. This meeting concerns the Willows, Hoover, Hamann Park, Sherman Oaks, Bramhall and River Glen Parks as well as Rainbow, Moreland West and San Tomas. It covers all of District 6 and then some.

A meeting was held on Wednesday, Jan. 25 for Houge Park, Cambrian, Kirk, Hoffman Via Monte, the Spot and Edenvale to cover southside community and senior centers in Districts 2, 9 and 10. City Councilmembers Forrest Williams, Judy Chirco and Nancy Pyle attended and stayed for the entire meeting.

A final citywide meeting will take place on Saturday, Feb. 11 from 9 to 11 a.m. in the multipurpose room at the Camden Community Center. If you missed the meeting in your area, this provides a chance to talk about or add comments about a center. The Camden Center is located at 3369 Union Ave.

Hurtado says the community meetings have been extremely productive so far. “We’ve captured a lot of information from these meetings,” she said.

Data review
Once the community-input process is completed by mid-February, all the data will be reviewed for the next two months. Hurtado says the plan is to review the meeting data in March and April, select the non-profit operators in May and June, in order to conduct contract negotiations over the summer allowing the nonprofits to begin their service by October.

“The city will provide 49 employees, but they will be concentrated in the larger facilities like Camden leaving 6.75 FTEs to run the remainder of the district. We will partner with others to run the other satellite centers. This is a cost-neutral strategy. The agencies will pick up some operating costs, like janitorial services and the city will upgrade the facilities through Measure P,” Hurtado added.

It’s important for community members to communicate their needs at these meetings. If you are or were unable to attend the meeting about community centers in your area, make sure you attend the final meeting on Feb. 11. If that too is impossible, contact your City Council representative and make your needs and desires known. Willow Glen is covered by District 6 City Councilmember Ken Yeager, who can be reached at (408) 535-4906. Cambrian Park’s City Councilmember is Judy Chirco, she can be reached at (408) 535-4909.