Good News, Bad News - Seniors

Last week was a week filled with good news and bad news. We’ll start today with the story about the Civic Center/Senior Center. Tomorrow we’ll look at affordable housing and after that Village Pond Park.

CIVIC/SENIOR CENTER

The good news is that after years of waiting, the City learned last week that the Army Corps of Engineers was going to sign off on the remaining environmental issue with the location of the $5 million Civic/Senior Center slated to go in near Serrano Creek between Dimension and Trabuco and Lake Forest Drive and Bake Parkway. It will be only a skip and a jump away from the existing City Hall, which is leased space.

This is good news because Lake Forest is about the only city that doesn’t have either a City Hall or a Senior Center. Setting aside the construction costs, the savings in rent alone will be enormous. There will also be the opportunity to build it so that it is energy efficient, saving more money on the costs of utilities, landscaping, etc.

Judging from the City’s past experience, building the new center should be accomplished in the next 3 years. The Council is scheduled to review plans for the preliminary design as well as the construction management.

That being said, I have been wondering for the past few months whether or not the proposed site is the best place to put the Senior Center. Few cities have a joint Civic and Senior Center, so in theory and in practice the two don’t seem to go together. But more importantly, the question that keeps haunting me is - “Why are we building a senior center in a place that doesn’t have many seniors living nearby?”

As I understand it, the bulk of our senior population is located west of Trabuco, and even west of Jeronimo. Senior citizens occupy the entirety of Freedom Village and in addition constitute the majority of the thousands of mobile home residents. Why would we build a senior center so many miles away, and in an area that isn’t exactly on the beaten path? After all, seniors often have transportation problems, and our City certainly has a traffic problem. So why are we forcing senior citizens to spend significantly more time getting to and from a center, and in addition clogging up our streets at times when there is already a lot of traffic on the road. And it’s not merely the amount of traffic, it’s also the fact that the traffic to and from the senior center, based on where the senior citizens actually live, is likely to go through already crowded sections of the City.

The City does own land closer to the part of the City where the seniors live, west of Jeronimo and north of El Toro. Doesn’t it make more sense to put a senior center there?

Ever since I joined the Council I have been asking for a global analysis of the land that the City owns and a discussion and prioritization of our needs, so that we can match the available land with those needs. Some of my colleagues have also expressed the desire to have this discussion, yet to date, we have not done this. Before we talk about building a senior center where the seniors aren’t, we should have the broader discussion. It’s possible that the gains in construction costs by doing two projects at one time mitigate the problems of building the senior center a long way from where the seniors live. Perhaps there is some other facility or resource that the City needs which could be better located at the proposed Serrano Creek site, so that the savings in construction costs can be achieved without having to inconvenience the seniors. This we won’t know until and unless we do the global analysis I have been asking for.

At the next City Council meeting I will ask again for the global needs assessment and resource allocation discussion.

SENIOR SERVICES

Since we’re talking about seniors, last week I learned that the amount of federal funds being funneled by the City to help senior citizens has been steadily dropping for the past 5 years. Click here to view the staff report – page 32 reveals that we went from helping more than 100 “seniors and frail elderly” per year in 2010 and 2011 to less than 30 last year. Along with homeless people, it’s the only category that is declining, while all the other groups are stable or increasing.

I’ve asked the Deputy City Manager to look into this situation and to bring us some alternatives next year when we re-allocate federal monies.

MEALS ON WHEELS

A few months ago, my colleagues (Voigts, Robinson, and Hamilton) voted against allowing AgeWell Senior Services to use the City Hall as a local distribution point to feed dozens of senior citizens in Lake Forest. We are one of the few cities that doesn’t provide this service, and we may even be the only City of any size that doesn’t. Since that time I have been asking community groups and private businesses to help, and several have offered, but there hasn’t been a good fit between what they have and what AgeWell needs. Basically AgeWell needs a place from where they can operate, Monday through Friday, from 10 am to 2 pm. They need a room with a refrigerator and some dry storage space. Ideally access to a computer and a printer would make the space ideal. Since volunteers will be arriving with SUVs to fill up and take the meals to distribute, there should be easy vehicle access. If you have a space, please let me know by e-mailing me at GardnerForCouncil@gmail.com

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr. Jim Gardner is on the City Council for Lake Forest. You can check him out on LinkedIn and/or Facebook and you can share your thoughts about the City at Lake Forest Town Square on Facebook. His comments are not meant to reflect official City Policy.

Dr. Gardner has office hours every Tuesday from 3 pm to 5 pm at the City Hall. In addition, he holds a Town Hall meeting every quarter. The next meeting will be on Dec 12 at 2 pm at the Foothill Ranch Public Library.

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