The City does need to make a commitment to the senior center if it is to be anything more than a handful of people playing bingo and a handful of people doing yoga--which is pretty much what it is now. Simply having a new and different setting isn't going to change that. What will change it is hiring staff with appropriate training and expertise who can plan and implement an engaging program to meet the needs of all seniors in our diverse community. City treasurer Heather Campbell made this point at the informal Council meeting last week, after asserting that there was nothing in the memorandum of understanding between the City and Galvan that compelled the City to hand over $100,000: the City needs the $100,000 for programming and staff.
The sine qua non of a good senior center is not a building. It is good programming. A building is nice, but a good program can exist without a dedicated building. Hannah Williamson demonstrated this back in 2004 when she started a program for seniors called Sun Catchers. The group, independent of any kind of municipal sanction or support, used the basement of the First Presbyterian Church as its gathering place and provided a variety of experiences that attracted a variety of people--everything from learning about services for seniors to advocating for better sidewalks to sharing life stories to hearing artists talk about their work to enjoying evenings of sit-down (as opposed to stand-up) comedy. Tragically, Sun Catchers did not survive Williamson's diagnosis of cancer and eventual death in 2006, but what she initiated and achieved should be a lesson in what is necessary for a good senior center.
COPYRIGHT 2015 CAROLE OSTERINK
Susan Troy submitted this comment:
ReplyDeleteI had hoped that the Commissioner of Aging would have provided some relevant history to the on-going conversation regarding Hudson's Senior Center.
Since that has not happened, allow me to provide this very relevant information:
Post Crosswinds construction, there was considerable interest by many parties, including the then-Mayor, the Commissioner of Aging, and the Seniors who were using the Community Room(s) at Crosswinds on a monthly basis, for the developer to build a Senior Center about the same size as Crosswind's Community Building. (The Community Building housed the Management Office, the Custodian's Office, and the various Community Rooms, including a full kitchen.)
And it wasn't just interest; there was solid support for a Senior Center to be built by that developer, who, by then, had not only been thoroughly vetted by the entire community, but had proven his commitment to Hudson, when he went forward with Crosswinds even after being denied a PILOT. Many developers would have either walked away, sued the City, or found another way to be generally difficult and disagreeable. But this developer wasn't interested in pay-to-play schemes, or revenge; he simply wanted to build exceptional Workforce Housing.
There were initials meetings and many conversations about particulars, and then. . . just nothing.
The meetings and conversations were put on indefinite hold, and certainly not by the developer, with absolutely no explanation provided.
So actually, a Senior Center, a well done Senior Center, could have been built in the late 2000s, and all of the hoopla about the Senior Center being temporarily, unhappily, housed at the Boys and Girls Club could have been avoided, along with all the rest of the political drama, AND the disappointment among Hudson's Seniors.
Stockholm syndrome, or capture-bonding, is a psychological phenomenon in which hostages express empathy and sympathy and have positive feelings toward their captors, sometimes to the point of defending and identifying with the captors.
ReplyDelete