Balancing the services that our community provides with the limitations of what non-affluent property owners can afford is a delicate work. This is the issue that the Greenfield Town Council faced when voting on a new senior center.
I always supported a new senior center. Long before our current senior center director was in place, I worked with Richard Henry and the late Woody Tyler on a nascent attempt to plan for a capital campaign. I met regularly with Mayor Christine Forgey and was totally supportive of her efforts to build a combined senior and veteran center with up to 80 percent federal funding. I am not ignorant of the problems at our current senior center or new to the conversation.
The plan that Mayor William Martin presented for a new Senior Center was to cost an additional $5,250,000 and to be paid 100 percent by Greenfield property taxpayers. It was not a plan that ever had the support of the Town Council or the community outside of the current senior center users. One thousand and six hundred people 55 and up use the senior center an average of 10 times every year. Eighty percent or 1,200 are Greenfield residents. There are about 4,000 Greenfield residents over 65. That means somewhere between 75-80 percent of Greenfield seniors don’t use the senior center. Those are the people who I received numerous calls from leading up the vote on the capital budget. They told me that they were on fixed incomes and could not afford the taxes they were already paying. They said a new senior center was no good to them if they could not afford to live here.
That is why even though I support a new senior center, even though a fully funded senior center was included in the alternative capital budget presented by council President Brickett Allis and myself, I ultimately voted against funding the plan for this senior center.
Just voting “no” does not solve the problem though. I have had many of my new colleagues talk with me about how we can improve conditions at the existing senior center. Improvements — including to our management team which clearly has not worked effectively with the current building owner to meet basic maintenance and environmental concerns — must be made.
Ultimately, however, a new senior center is still needed. That is why the day after the council vote, I filed a Motion for Reconsideration. Our rules only allow one day to file such a motion and it can only be filed by someone who voted with the prevailing side.
I did this because I believe, creatively, we can build a new senior center in a way that will not cost the taxpayers anything. I have proposed to the mayor of a public-private partnership before, but hope he will reconsider now that the current plan has been voted down. The problem with the Weldon is not that it is privately owned, but that it is not designed to be a senior center.
My plan is that the town put out a request for proposals for a private developer to build a multi-story building that will have a state-of-the-art senior center on the first floor meeting all of the specifications of the building committee and luxury or senior apartments on the upper stories. The private developer would own the land given by the town in exchange for a 99-year lease on the first floor for $1/year.
There are two problems with this plan. One is that under prevailing wage laws, the increased cost of a private developer building a public building would be high. That is why I would propose funding $3 million of the costs. As long as the total value of the new property on this 2-acre lot is $3.2 million, at our current tax rate, the town would recover the principal of the bond for the $3 million in 20 years (ideally the term of the bonding). After 20 years, we would have new revenue for the town. By comparison, the 1.8-acre Weldon is assessed at $6.2 million, the 4.9-acre Mill House is $4.5 million and the 2.1-acre Congress Street high-rise is $5.1 million.
The second problem is that the residential units would require additional parking, which would mean the community garden would be lost at this site. However, the town has a long-term lease across from the Mill House and will no longer be needed for a senior center and dozens of acres at the old poor farm now worked by Just Roots. Both good, if not perfect, for a community garden.
While this proposal would require work to find a good private partner, it is achievable and affordable. I hope the mayor comes back with this plan or a plan like it, which will strike that delicate balance.
Isaac Mass, an at-large councilor, is vice president of the Greenfield Town Council.