Future Unclear for Senior Centers

McGovern Park Senior Center. Photo taken May 24, 2020 by Jeramey Jannene.

Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley‘s administration and the Milwaukee County Board aren’t on the same page when it comes to senior centers.

The administration wants to pause any further investments in the county’s five publicly-run senior centers until it provide the board with a comprehensive report on the state of the facilities and what the county can afford. Officials said it would have the report by this December.

Earlier this year, the administration proposed partnering with a private developer — the non-profit Jewish Family Services JFS — to redevelop the McGovern Park Senior Center as a mixed-use building with a new senior center and with 30 to 55 units of affordable senior housing on the floors above. JFS planned to finance the project, building the entire facility, including the public senior center, without county taxpayer funds. The county board rejected the proposal.

Aaron Hertzberg, director of the Department of Administrative Services, recently said the McGovern Park Senior Center ordeal told the administration that it needs to have a “big picture conversation” with the board about senior centers. He noted that some supervisors expressed that they felt rushed during consideration of the McGovern Proposal.

“We want to make sure you all have a clear understanding of what facility conditions look like,” Hertzberg told the ad-hoc Capital Improvements Committee (CIC) on June 12. “What programming looks like within these facilities. And then we are all best positioned to make really smart financial decisions in the best interest of the residents we serve.”

The CIC, which is made up of county supervisors, county and municipal officials, is charged with developing a list of project recommendations for the upcoming budget. The list is considered by the county executive while developing a budget proposal, which is unveiled by the end of September.

On Tuesday, the CIC voted to withdraw an approximately $2.1 million project for the senior centers from its recommended list. The funds would have been used to upgrade fire protection systems at the senior centers. The decision followed an earlier revelation buried in a budget report from county facilities staff that did not recommend new repairs for the McGovern Park basement or roofs at Wil-O-Way facilities, which offer programming for children with disabilities.

Sup. Willie Johnson, Jr. noted that the decision may appear “as if you’re putting people and property at risk.” He asked whether the existing systems still work.

The fire suppression systems still work, Hertzberg told the CIC Tuesday. “The alarms and strobes within the facilities work….So there would be notice to anybody in facilities if there is a fire….The challenge is it’s not communicating with other parts of the system

“Just for anyone watching: why would we remove senior center fire prevention?,” said Sup. Shawn Rolland. “The idea here is that there’s this larger conversation in the county about pausing investments in senior centers and the Wil-O-Way facilities with the sense that there’ll be a larger, robust report coming in December that talks about how we’ll invest in these things in the future.”

Sup. Steve Taylor, who chairs the CIC, put it more bluntly: “There could be closures, like, you’re not gonna put a new, upgraded fire system in the building that you could close in two years, for all we know.”

Hertzberg clarified that the report would not make any decisions about closing facilities. Rather, the goal is to “lay all the facts on the table” so that the administration can have a broad conversation with the board, and the community, about the future of the centers.

“We learned going through the McGovern process that we need to lay all those facts on the table and make sure there’s a shared information symmetry for everyone to understand what facility conditions look like, what challenges we’re facing and…why we think the status quo can’t continue,” he said.

The county has a longstanding structural operating deficit and limited ability to pay for all the infrastructure it owns. It has a five-year backlog of maintenance needs estimated at roughly $1 billion. Over the past 15 years, the county has disposed of more than 3 million square feet of real estate, according to Hertzberg, who said the administration wants to have a “strategic conversation” about senior centers and how they fit into the county’s portfolio of facilities.

“The reality is this started percolating when we had the McGovern conversation, all right,” said Sup. Taylor. “I mean, that’s where all this began, because we have aging facilities, we have a [senior services] delivery system that needs to be looked at.”

The McGovern Senior Center is in poor condition and the administration has said the county cannot afford to replace it. The redevelopment project was the Crowley administration’s last-ditch attempt to save the senior center.

“By failing to act today…we have also moved one step closer to being forced to make difficult decisions about downsizing or eliminating senior centers in Milwaukee County,” County Executive Crowley said after the board rejected the proposal.

The basement of the McGovern center, which was already in need of maintenance, had water infiltration during the recent massive flooding event. The facility has been closed since the flooding. It was already scheduled to be closed for cleaning. But the closure was extended in order to clean up the water in the basement.

“Air quality testing will be performed as a precaution following water mitigation work which has taken place,” said Jill Lintonen, marketing and communications director for the Department of Health and Human Services in a statement. “The anticipated day for the building to reopen [is] on Thursday 8/21.”

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