The following information was published in the Senior Citizens Club August Bulletin.
The City has been accumulating funds ($400,000 to date) through a federal grant program, Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) to provide Senior Citizen facilities. In 2001, the city manager recommended to the council that they sell the funds to another city for a discount (60 cents on the dollar) because time was running out to use them. I objected to this course of petition and wrote a letter to the Council in March, 2001, showing how the available CDBG funds could be used for a modular structure on half acre of leased School District land. My informal discussions found the School District receptive to the idea.
I met with city staff and they were receptive to the idea of purchasing a low cost modular building and negotiating a long term lease for school District property. At Staff’s request, I prepared, and Senior Club members responded to, a survey of preferred locations for the center. In November, city staff informed me a modular building on leased land was a permitted use for the funds, that a report on alternative plans was in preparation and that we would be involved in the process. Although the Recreation and Parks director was invited to attend two Senior Club meetings to give us a report, he reneged on both occasions. He said he had submitted his report to the City Director of Administrative Services. I called her and the City Manger to obtain a copy but was told it was “privileged information,” not available to the public.
In March, 2002, your Board of Directors met with representatives of Pepperdine University who told us that a surplus two-year-old 4,272 square foot modular building would be available for purchase in July/August for $126,000, moved and installed. Members of the board visited the building and found it suitable. However, the day after the 2002 Council elections, I was informed that the Council planned to move City Hall to Stuart Ranch Road, and that they would use the CDBG funds to prepay a five-year lease and furnish a “Senior Facility” of 1,200 square feet there.
Subsequently, the Senior Citizen Club board passed the following motion: “We reject the proposal as we understand it, as inadequate in size and having no long term equity.” Senior club representatives testified at the Recreation and Parks Commission hearing in April and the later Council hearing and presented our alternative plan of acquiring the Pepperdine building and placing it on leased land. They indicated the advantages were that the City would own a Senior Center and the seniors would have an adequate facility and it would be convenient for them to volunteer time to work with the children both at the nearby schools and at the facility. Now the receipt of the CBDG funds is in jeopardy. At a recent televised Council meeting, City staff indicated they are now having problems obtaining final approval from the agency that administers the CDBG funds, primarily due to the retractable wall between the Senior Room and Council Chambers and the manner in which modifications are being handled. Once again staff has suggested that the Council may have to consider selling the funds for 60 cents on the dollar to avoid required project approval by the CDBG administrators.
The unfortunate bottom line is that the City will never again have the opportunity to accumulate the funds sufficient to build their own Senior Facility. (It only occurred because we were a new city.) At the end of the prepaid five-year lease, the city and the seniors will have nothing and the argument to let the Malibu Bay Co. development agreement provide a facility will be kept alive.
Walt Keller