Smoking Ban in Public Housing to Be Discussed (UPDATED)

Nearly a year after it was first proposed, the Council’s Committee on Public Health, Safety and Environment will take up Tom Furey’s proposed smoking ban on public housing in the city.

I loathe and despise the habit but as I said when Tom first proposed it, it’s bad law.  And it’s condescending, encouraging people to think that “poor” (or low-income as the people in my building are) are “bad”.  (If they have money they must be “good” or at least, well, “it’s their money they can do whatever they want with it!”)

Whatever your views on smoking, if you live in public housing and have an opinion, please show up at the meeting.  

Tuesday, 6:30 PM in the Council chambers.  (I can’t be there myself due to other commitments.)

UPDATE:  Last night, the proposal was DOA.

Quote:

Earlier, Furey said that living in taxpayer-supported public housing was "not a right and an entitlement, but a privilege and a responsibility."

OK, Tom, what’s the next rung down?  The poorhouse?  The homeless shelter?  I have been in public housing for 25 years.  Yes that makes me lazy and irresponsible.  Glad to hear it and will try to uplift myself and my neighbors right away.

Some other comments from the 101st Chairborne, Salem News Regiment:

peaceful_life

They have money for smokes because their rent, health care and food costs are largely taken care of by the taxpayer leaving plenty of splash cash.

OK, pretend it’s your mom or dad in my building.  They probably are.  A lot of middle-class people use their parents as tax shelters.  They won’t want their inheritance wiped out by housing when Dad can’t live in the family homestead anymore.  So they’ll have Mom spend down her personal assets and file for Medicaid.

And public housing.  It’s not far from the truth to say that elderly housing is no less a subsidy to middle-class boomers with aging parents, and to old boomers themselves, than it is to dissipated people like myself.

In this economy, and even before, many who would think they were too proud to consider public assistance have come to plead for it. 

And, once they have it, invent justifications for why they are more deserving for public assistance than those “others”.

Meanwhile, in buildings like the Jefferson built by the private sector, you can smoke as thou wilt.   Considering the build quality of that complex, the first tenant to sleep in bed with a smoke may likely be the last one!  (It was, after all, a disposed lit cigarette that destroyed an entire apartment building in Peabody.) 

Not sure about you, Tom, but I am for sure “morally” concerned about that.  As much as I hate the Jefferson, a fire in that complex will be catastrophic and my schadenfreude doesn’t extend to seeing body bags carried out of a smoking crater across the street from me.

Where’s your outrage?  You didn’t think that far ahead when that project was green-lighted in the Usovicz administration?

Now you can grandstand about public housing and personal responsibility. 

Tom,

Get your head out of your ass.

Morency Manor Elevator Update, March 2010

The elevator construction in my building continues.  A few days ago, I held the door for a five-man crew wrangling a very large item through the front door.  Later that day, I’m with a neighbor and one of the contractors waiting for the elevator and they get to talking about the work.  That big package I helped get in the building was, as I suspected, the elevator cab.  This has to be assembled on site.  I’ve been trying to find pictures of elevator construction on Bing and Google without much success.

That was the first sign of progress I’d personally seen, though I’ve heard the pounding and construction noises for the past few months.  (My unit is neatly between the old elevator and the new one!)

The elevator shaft was finished in January:

And the permanent view from my window:

According to the contractor (and not an official announcement), the work itself will be done in a few weeks.  A few weeks after that, the elevator will be inspected—there are only two inspectors for the whole state—and presumably open for service after that.  So sometime in mid-April, we’ll be using our new elevator.

After that, the talk is that the old elevator, long prone to breakdowns and stalls, will be replaced.  So the construction noise won’t stop for me.

Stranding Seniors

I’ve written before about transportation for seniors and the disabled.  Another story came out over the holidays.

The Globe profiles one Marblehead resident:

It’s the spur-of-the-moment trips that June Casler misses most, the spontaneous decision to catch a 7 p.m. movie or to pick up a coveted book at the library. The octogenarian hung up her car keys for good when she moved from western New York to Marblehead in June because she felt that negotiating busy, unfamiliar streets could be distracting and dangerous.

Casler has since discovered that the local Council on Aging van doesn’t run nights or weekends and requires 24-hour advance notice. She doesn’t want to burden her son and daughter-in-law, who live nearby, for rides during the van’s off hours. But neither does she want to end up like one of her 90-year-old friends who could barely see but was still behind the wheel - until her family called police to intercede.

We have been heading for a collision for some time.  We’ve built our society around the car and deemphasized other options so that the car and its needs have become a massive hidden subsidy imposed on cities, towns and the state.

At the same time, the cohort of seniors that remember life without easy transport—the car life—is dwindling.  My late mom remembers streetcars, trains, walking, buses and even horses.  Seniors today and those soon-to-be-seniors have few such memories and baby boomers have none:  They have always enjoyed life with the car.

I wonder, as well, if the “nuclear family” philosophy of the boomers has contributed.  I heard any number of stories in high school of students reaching 18 and their parents showing them the door, politely or not. 

How can one square this with the sentiment I’ve also heard over and over, that “your kids owe you” to look after you in your old age?  Many adult children are scattered across the country, since mobility is valued, preferred and even necessary for some.

There will be another attack of outrage when a senior is involved in a traffic accident, but I fear we’re not going to do much.  Easy to be mad at some poor 80-year old that runs down a kid, but hard to admit that your city’s development philosophy is flawed or that we’ve been trying to segregate our seniors for 50 years and it doesn’t work. 

Real resolution of this would be expensive.  So we won’t see progress.

Truthfully, seniors have every incentive to dodge the eye doctor and drive no matter what.  It’s the only way they’re really independent.

Ms. Casler took the high road;  I just wonder if she’s regretting it.

Morency Manor work continues

The work continues on my building.  I’ve been told to expect work on my apartment to begin in a week or two.  I’m guessing the week of the 30th or the week after, at the latest. 

After taking this picture, I now know why it was so loud in my unit this week.  How loud?

This loud!  Measured from my living room.  I hope the masons were wearing hearing protection.

More from Salem Senior Recognition Days

Senior Tea at Brookhouse

Mel Simons.

Scenes from the Salem Senior Recognition Days opening ceremonies

Pols have a chat.  John Keenan, Kim Driscoll, John Tierney and Dan Brinsky, representing Senator Berry.

Mayor Driscoll and Vice Chair Sosnowski wait for their turn to speak.

Pat Sosnowski greets Congressman Tierney.  Also looking on, Pat Reed and Teasie Riley-Goggin.

Pat spends time with a new friend from Northeast Animal Shelter.

Changes at Home

Changes are coming to my very home!  For the past several years, the Housing Authority has been trying to get funding for a new, second elevator for my building.  The original elevator is breaking down.  If a second elevator could not be installed and the original elevator needed to be replaced, the whole building would be uninhabitable, so I was told by the executive director when she came here for a tenant meeting.

I have mixed feelings:  The renovation will take away two of my living room windows. and move two others.  One doesn’t miss natural lighting until one doesn’t have it anymore.

There’s no possibility of stopping this or depriving my neighbors of an elevator, but I think I’ll miss my windows.

I’ll be chronicling this project on Flickr.

Transit for the Disabled Endangered by Cuts

The Salem News has finally caught on to the service cuts the MBTA proposed a few weeks ago.   This time, they’re focusing on cuts to The RIDE, the T’s paratransit service for people with disabilities.

The T would eliminate van service in Peabody, Beverly, Danvers, Wenham, Topsfield and Middleton.

This affects service to these communities, as well as from, so disabled riders in Salem aren’t in the clear.  Especially since Danvers and Peabody are big shopping, employment and medical areas.

One woman in Beverly is already affected by lack of van service.  Lois Gallo is a clinical social worker at Cummings Center.   She has The RIDE in Beverly, but wants to move to Ipswich.  Ipswich, as the result of a decision made years ago, is not in the MBTA system but is served by CATA (Cape Ann Transportation Authority).  CATA does not run van service to Ipswich.

I would note that under the proposed cuts, Ms. Gallo would not have van service at all.

Without the MBTA to run vans, service would either come from chair car services, which are very expensive for individuals, or from communities that run their own service for the elderly, as Salem, Peabody and surrounding communities do.

Governing Magazine recently ran an article, “The Costliest Ride” about paratransit services.

In Sioux Falls, South Dakota, a city of just over 150,000 people, almost half of the annual public transit budget doesn’t go for buses, or trolleys, or any newfangled light-rail system. It goes for vans—to provide mobility to disabled people who can’t use the regular vehicles. These riders receive curbside service outside their homes, and are dropped off at their destination of choice, at a cost to Sioux Falls of $25.61 per trip. Every sizable city has some version of this program. It’s called paratransit.

And it’s a piece of the public transportation puzzle that’s often forgotten—by everyone except transit agencies and those who depend on the service. The agencies can’t ignore paratransit because they’re legally obliged to provide it under the federal Americans with Disabilities Act. But it’s hugely expensive. Sioux Falls’ cost per trip is actually lower than most—a one-way ride for a single disabled person costs more than $30 in many places. While most big cities don’t spend as much proportionately as Sioux Falls, it’s common for a transit agency to devote 10 percent or more of its operating budget to paratransit. And the fares normally cover less than 10 percent of the costs.

It’s a necessary service, but a very expensive one for cities and towns to provide.  This is why I’ve been so insistent that our new senior center be on a bus line and accessible to public transit, whether was at the old St. Joseph’s Church or at the Boston St. site.  Despite our best intentions, it’s an expensive service.  When I went to the Council on Aging earlier this afternoon to take the picture that leads this blog, all five of their vans were parked.  I can only assume we can’t afford to keep them moving at all times, what with drivers, gas and the many other expenses that come with a vehicle fleet.

If the MBTA takes themselves out of the picture due to budget cuts, the cities and towns could not possibly pick up the slack, and our vans won’t be running any more often than they do now..

A New Senior Center: More Shouting

The Salem News (and the Gazette)  have reported on last week’s public hearing on the mayor’s proposed site for the new senior center, Boston & Bridge Sts.

As reported, and as I feared, the meeting was a shouting match according to the News , a “marathon 3-1/2 hour public hearing”.  Just like the Courthouse meeting last year.  I didn’t want to go to that hearing or even film it for SATV, knowing that it was going to be all screaming.  Sadly, I wasn’t wrong.

If you’re a long-time reader of my blog, you probably have guessed my position on the new center.

Unfortunately, I am going against most of my friends, including Leo Jodoin and my own ward councilor, Mike Sosnowski:  The senior center at Boston St. is the best and most affordable option for Salem.  The Willows site should not even be an option if we value access to the senior center for all our elderly, not just those with complete mobility and good eyesight.

Some of my reasoning has been posted before, but I’ll summarize it again.

For the past several months, the Commission on Disabilities has been discussing pedestrian and bus access to the new YMCA at Leggs Hill Road on the Marblehead/Salem line.  Presently, the route 455/459 runs the closest, passing by Leggs Hill about a 1/4 mile from the YMCA, at Loring Ave, where a small bridge runs over Forest River.

Unfortunately, the Y’s on a big hill and the road up to the facility has no sidewalk.  We discussed this at length.  We also discussed the lack of a sidewalk at the curve outside South Campus, on which many motorized-chair users go to and from the college.

In fact, we took two meetings to discuss how disabled bus users could possibly get to use the new Y.  When Maureen McConnell (paralympian and commissioner on Marblehead’s disability board) comes to our March meeting, we’ll discuss that some more!  Our February meeting just past was full of discussion over the Highland Ave. sidewalk situation and praise over my getting it into the News.

The Commission and I consider transit access very important, obviously.

The Willows site proponents don’t even pretend that it’s accessible by foot.    They are amongst the 70% of seniors using the center that now drive to the center.  Buses haven’t run to the Willows for 39 years and probably never will again for the foreseeable future.

Where does that leave the 30% who don’t drive?  I know, the vans, right?  Not really.

A concrete example:  Let’s say it’s 2030, I’m still in Salem (I’m not sure how) and I want to go to the senior center for a class.  Let’s say, additionally, I want to volunteer and teach the class.  (If I want passive entertainment, I’ll watch TV!)

At Boston St., this is easy:  I walk down to the bus stop a little while before class starts and take the #465, which I expect may still be running in 2030 since it is a long-established route.  I don’t exactly have perfect freedom—I have to wait for the bus—but it’s not bad.

At the Willows, there is no bus service.  I loved walking down to the Willows in the spring in 2009 but since my hip got worked on I can’t walk very far.  So I get a van.  Right?

This van, though it’s the best the city can provide, and a real necessity for many, is limited.  I can’t take it when I want;  I have to plan to go to the center.  And I can’t just go for my class and then go home, I have to stay the whole day, like a schoolchild.

This assumes the van is running, that it’s not late or didn’t forget to pick you up, that the weather is reasonable.

I’m not going to have the same experience as the 70% who can drive there whenever they feel like it.  More often than not in debates over transportation access, the 30% who have to rely on other transit are just told to "just deal with it, we can’t serve everybody!”

When my mother was confined to a wheelchair and got her motorized scooter, she wanted to go everywhere with it!  If she decided at 8PM Saturday that she was going to go to the convenience store for goodies, she was going whether she got my permission or not!  She got into the paper herself over handicapped access.  I’ll be shocked if I don’t think the same way when I’m her age.

The disability community in Salem won’t settle for vans if there’s a better alternative for independence.  The Willows site isn’t it.

Another issue brought up at great length on Salemweb:  pollution.  The Boston St. site is of course the former Sylvania site and will need to be cleaned up.  Aren’t there cleaner sites? 

Reality check:  Salem is nearly 400 years old.  For most of its history, the industry it needed to have in order to be a prosperous city was in its borders or close nearby.  We hadn’t yet invented the concept of having our infrastructure or our industry in China where we never had to think about it or pollution, nor were we living solely from our “historic property values”.

Just in Blubber Hollow alone, there are sites our seniors may be familiar with that they may use every day and take for granted:

• Walgreens (was Ideal Finishing)
• Moose Lodge (industrial)
• Sunshine Laundry (the auto body shop’s out back)

The whole city is filled with old industrial sites:

• Morency Manor (was a gas station)
• Jefferson (Parker Brothers & the old Salem DPW garage)
• Salem Depot (B&M railroad turntable and yard for a century!)
• Salem State College Central Campus (Sylvania)
• Wendy’s, Lafayette St. (old factory)
• SATV (old industrial block with still a few commercial tenants like Salem Overhead Door Co.)

Since virtually every house in Salem once burned coal, who knows what’s in your soil?  Oh, and the Willows site:  Right next to the power plant and its mercury emissions.  You say you don’t run scared in line at Hobbs Popcorn?

The proponents of the Willows site would no doubt discount any unfavorable environmental findings that came out about their favorite place, using the same logic I’ve just used.

The senior center debate, for the loudest shouters like Teazie Goggin, isn’t about pollution or transit or traffic or any of that.  They really want a boon, a clubhouse and a special place at $7.5 million dollars (and rising).

To me, the senior center is none of those things.  It is a place in trust for the community and all seniors in Salem, all of us who get that far, regardless of our income, social status or ability to drive.

It’s not a clubhouse.  Or a “special place”.  Or a boon.  It is for all seniors in Salem.  All of them.  Soon.  Today, not “Someday”.

I wish my ward councilor would stop fighting Mrs. Driscoll long enough to realize that.  He has business in his own ward he should attend to.  Such as a new playground.

Update:  John Walsh makes the same points in the News.    Chris Smigliano has a very cruel, but unfortunately very true editorial cartoon on the controversy.

Question One

Most readers know there is a initiative question one on our ballot this November.  Question One, if passed, would abolish the Massachusetts income tax, putting us in the company of states like New Hampshire and Florida, which have no income tax.

Supporters of Question One want to “send a message to legislators”.  Opponents predict Armageddon.  That’s simplified but not by much.  The Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation points out that of  the $32 billion dollar state budget, $12.5 billion comes from the income tax.

That’s not an small drop, nor is it “cutting the fat” as the libertarians might put it. 

This week, we got a taste of what the consequences would be like:  Governor Patrick announced his Fiscal Action Plan to close a $1.7 billion gap in the state budget.

$1.7 billion.  Not $12.5 billion.

Notably, these cuts are hitting programs for people with disablities and the elderly.  People are already screaming.  The state’s  audio service for the visually impaired, TIC Network, is getting its budget cut.

In the past week, I’ve read this and other articles on Patrick’s budget cuts and have been drawn to the comments before reading the articles themselves.   There are several tropes—commonly expressed ideas—I’ve seen in those comment threads that I just have to respond to.

On cuts to elder services:  One commenter on Boston.com talked about her elderly mom and the problems arranging care for her.  The retort was:  “Well, you should be responsible for looking after your parents!”

Well, yes.  But who can do it alone?

I helped care for my mom in the last three years of her life.  It’s been over 14 years since she died.  I do not regret looking after her for even an instant.  Never did I think of running away.

But I didn’t do it alone.  Mom had an array of care workers to look after her.  She had elder services to look after ordinary things like transportation.  She had visiting nurses.  She had a homemaking service.

Caregiving is very hard work with no small amount of stress.  Even after I admit I loved my mom so much I’d do the three years with her over and over, I say also that it changed me for the worse, just from the emotional stress that all caregivers experience at one time or another.   

A caregiver is more often than not an adult daughter, maybe the youngest or oldest in her family.  Maybe she has the “least” amount of obligations to look after Mom (or Dad).  Does she give up her job to look after her?  Can she? 

This applies no less to people with disabilities and those who care for them.  A child who becomes disabled can upend a family.

What happens when no one is there for the caregiver?  Elder abuse is already worrisome.   A few years ago in Nevada, an elderly man was dropped off in the street in his chair and a pack of diapers;  his relatives were too stressed to look after him any longer.  Will we see elderly and disabled left in the streets of Salem?

Responsibility is nothing without support.  The state service agencies, however maligned, are for many the first, last and best source of support.

“Just fire the managers!”

We all love Indians and hate chiefs.  Management has a role, though;  do we want all our caseworkers to do all their own management tasks?  How about closing offices?  Would that be a good idea?  If you’re in Springfield and your caseworker has to work out of Worcester, maybe that’s not so good.

“Vote for One and send a message!  Those no-good hacks will never let it pass anyway!”

Then what’s the point?

We hate our legislators.  They are hacks.  I distrust them all, from Washington St. to Beacon Hill to the Capitol.  I have never known a government that was not ineffective or corrupt, I have never looked at a politician with anything but cynicism.  My earliest memories of being politically interested is in reading “All The President’s Men” in grammar school.

That’s all true.

So why are people saying they’ll depend on the legislature to set things right?

As someone at Governing.com pointed out, taxation is equivalent to legitimacy in our government.  Ever since Proposition 2-1/2 was passed in 1980, we have not believed in our government, and we have not trusted it.

That’s the real problem.

One final meme to address:

“Well, Deval will just undo the changes after Question One goes down!”

I don’t think so.  From the Globe:

State Treasurer Timothy P. Cahill said yesterday that the state must take dramatic steps - borrowing at a higher interest rate than usual and tapping the state's rainy day fund for $310 million - to make sure it has enough cash to make local aid payments due next week to cities and towns.

The extraordinary moves are a direct result of the troubled credit markets roiling Wall Street, and they portend more dire decisions looming for state lawmakers, Cahill said. The turmoil arises as state revenues are decreasing, making access to credit even more important.

"This is no longer a Wall Street issue, this is a Main Street issue," Cahill said. "I don't want to be constantly beating a dead horse. But it's a crisis. A full-blown crisis. We have to slow down or cut spending."

Whatever happens with Question One, this is not over.

UPDATE:  Excellent suggestions from Steven Crosby via CommonweathUnbound, but of course this isn’t as “fun” as watching people yell at each other.

UPDATE 2:  Vic DeGravio reminds us that mental health programs are already seriously affected by the cutbacks.  I know from personal experience that mental health programs have been the unwanted stepchildren of health spending in the state.  Small wonder it is going to get worse.  Another trope in the comments:  “Well, just cut the waste!”  

Sure.  Not.

Segregating Our Elderly

Continuing my last post on elderly segregation, I found an article in the Arizona Republic by Andrew Blechman on some disturbing trends in retirement housing, Living in a world of exclusion.

According to Blechman, new retirement communities that have sprung up in Arizona and Florida are segregating themselves from life outside their communities and society at large:

In my book Leisureville, I describe the successor to Arizona's once-famed Sun City. The Villages of Florida is now the largest retirement community in the world. Nearly twice the size of Manhattan and with a targeted population of 110,000 people, it has more than three-dozen golf courses (and plans for many more); dozens of pools and state-of-the-art recreation centers; two make-believe downtowns where residents can congregate; and a non-threatening Viagra-fueled nightlife for those on the prowl. (The vast majority of Villagers aren't actually old, but rather middle-aged.)

Aside from the canned environment - golden oldies are pumped out of lampposts and faux downtowns are "themed" by entertainment specialists - it's generally an attractive place to retire and play. And after a partial lifetime of hard work and child-rearing, older Americans deserve a place where they aren't marginalized and forgotten, let alone taxed like younger generations, right?

Although many of the subjects in my book often refer to this word - deserve - I'm left unmoved. I'm more concerned with examining the ramifications of this relatively new cultural phenomenon. Societal secession may be a recently legitimized rite of passage, but that doesn't mean that it is either healthy or desirable.

It has become increasingly clear to me that Sun City, the Villages, and thousands of other "voluntary ghettos" around the nation, are neither sustainable nor accountable. Rather, they are a fantasy, the product of a developer's profit-driven concept of "geritopia."

Sustainable communities aren't based on leisure. Living among a community of aging peers and golf courses may be comforting and a lot of fun, but a complex and functioning society demands cooperation between the generations.

We have an increasing number of retirement communities in Massachusetts.   When Almy’s was redeveloped as condos, it was at first intended as an upscale retirement community (circa 1985);  it didn’t work out and is now an ordinary condo complex.  But other retirement communities have developed.

The most well-known retirement community on the North Shore is Peabody’s Brooksby Village.  Brooksby Village, like many retirement communities, is self-contained, with its own cafe, grocery store, auditorium and TV station.

But as Neil Swidley points out in his 2005 Boston Globe Magazine article, “Village People”, the social dynamics are unexpected:  It’s more like high school.

JOAN CARR, BROOKSBY'S 53-YEAR-OLD executive director, travels one of the enclosed, climate-controlled walkways that connect all of the complex's buildings. She walks past the music room, past the exercise room and pool, past the woodworking shop, where the smell of pine shavings transports you right back to the ninth grade.

Or, in her case, back to her last career. Before running a retirement community, she spent nearly eight years as principal of Peabody's high school.

She finds plenty of similarities between the two jobs. The politics of dining-hall seating. The jockeying of competing activities. […]

"You see a lot of the cliques happening," she says, "the `in' group and the `out' group."

All those familiar archetypes from high school are still around her. The "most popular" and the outcasts, the doers and the complainers.

I never liked nor participated in the high school clique game, having been a stereotypical “nerd” and handicapped by hearing and visual impairments that delayed me socially for a long time.   I have, in many ways, the eyes and ears of a 70-year old;  how do real 70-year olds half deaf and with macular degeneration cope?

It seems like such an insular world.  I’ve said before I don’t like elderly vans because they remind me of the special ed vans of my school days, and loss of independence.  Why would I want to go back to that?  Why would anyone in my shoes want to go back to high school?

There is isolation, as well:

Still, death is omnipresent. On any suburban street, word of an elderly neighbor's passing is often buffered by news that another neighbor has just given birth or sent a daughter off to college. At Brooksby, all the life-cycle announcements involve death. Obituaries with photos are posted on the bulletin boards in the main gathering spots. Many residents confess to squinting as they walk by them every morning, hoping not to see a familiar face.

That gets to the heart of one of the most unfortunate aspects to retirement-community living: their isolation. Gerontologists have found that intergenerational contact is important to staying young. But aside from visits from their grandchildren, the main intergenerational contact that Brooksby residents have is with the high-school kids who work as waiters in the restaurants.

I’ve said before that in my building, a public housing complex that serves the poor to the lower middle class, the most intergenerational interaction that anyone will see here is a visit from their son or daughter or perhaps the kids, once or twice a year.  Some people visit their parents more often—bless them!—but sadly, I can tell it’s a holiday weekend by the number of younger adults and kids in my building.

That’s not what I want in our senior center.  It’s not healthy.

Last word from Blechman:

No one can live in a bubble, regardless of how pleasant the initial experience may be. As Arizonans may remember, even Biosphere 2 eventually needed oxygen pumped in. Similarly, without new generations and reinvestment, and the constant renewal they bring, it is hard to imagine how these communities will survive, much less prosper over time.

Hat tip to Beyond Red and Blue.

Senior Center Debate Goes to Council

Seniors outside their building at 45 St. Peter

The City Council will now debate the siting of the new senior center.  This has been the topic du jour at Salem Politics recently.

A quote from the article citing “some concerns:”

The Memorial Drive site is too far removed from the city center, some argue, an impractical choice in times of rising gas prices when many seniors depend on transportation by the Council on Aging shuttle which takes them on daily errands.

I’m the only one I know arguing this point and the only one in Salem talking about transportation issues like this, so draw your own conclusions on who is “some”.

Moving on, Mike Sosnowski is quoted:

Not everyone feels the Bridge Street location is the best choice. City Council President Michael Sosnowski has said the commercial area is not appropriate for seniors.

“They could watch the 18-wheelers stack up at the stop lights or they could look at the North River in all of its stinking glory,” he said. “What happens when they want to go outside? That’s key. A healthy lifestyle means a lot of fresh air as well. Seniors are like everyone else — they don’t want to be shut in a room.”

I’m not aware that the North River has smelled that bad since most of the industries in Blubber Hollow ceased operations some years back.  It certainly has been no obstacle to the users, human and canine, of Leslie’s Retreat Park.

The current Broad Street location doesn’t have a lot of outside amenities either, nor does it have a view.  When I’m there to videotape the Salem Senior Recognition Days opening ceremonies, there’s no view outside but parking lots and shrubbery.  There are benches in the parking lot to wait for your ride.

The site at Bridge and Boston is a large one that stretches nearly to Flint St. at one end and Federal St. at the other;  one would think there could be some green space in there.

Mike continues:

Some say building the center on Memorial Drive near the ocean could potentially earn the city just as much money as a private-public partnership.

“There could be hall rentals,” said Sosnowski. “Who wouldn’t want to have a wedding where they could walk out and have a nice picturesque view of the harbor? We could rent it once or twice a month … It would bring in lots of money.”

As I said on Salem Politics, this is a good “back-door” way to insure that only the right sort of people can take advantage of the center.  Youth functions would not see the sort of money nor use that function-hall proponents would cite.

As well, hall rentals for the current senior center and Winter Island are available now and anyone can rent Camp Naumkeag for a summer wedding.  What does that net us now?  What has been our function business been in the past?

The city has to compete with other private concerns, such as the Hawthorne Hotel, the Salem Waterfront Hotel, and the Knights of Columbus, so their revenue from senior center functions would be subject to the function market in Salem and on the North Shore in general.  Without knowing exactly how much “lots of money” this would be, as Mike puts it, I’m not sure I would want to count on that revenue.

“Given the fact that overwhelmingly [seniors] said they want the Willows, why can’t we do it,” Sosnowski added. “It would cost more money, maybe, but aren’t our seniors worth it?”

Our seniors are indeed worth our respect, but I’m much more alarmed by the segregation of our seniors  that has been emphasized ever more strongly and ever more vocally in the past several years.  (If one substituted for “seniors” the name of any other ethnic group, would one talk about this out loud?)

Any proposal that segregates our seniors will never  get my support no matter how many diamonds are draped on it.  

Article:   City Council sets date for report on new senior center - Salem, MA - Salem Gazette

Almost time for Salem Senior Recognition Days

Salem Senior Recognition Days is from August 4th to 10th this year. For more information, see the Salem Seniors Day website.