New Costa Mesa commission will focus on Senior Center
The Costa Mesa City Council approved creation of a new advisory commission Tuesday that will address issues facing the Senior Center.
The five-member commission, comprised of city appointees, will meet every other month at the West 19th Street facility. Commissioners, who do not have to be seniors, will receive $100 per meeting.
Councilwoman Wendy Leece dissented on the vote, contending that the commissioners should not receive the $100 payments. She also wanted to ensure that commissioners are registered voters in Costa Mesa.
Members of the city’s two other commissions — Planning and Parks and Recreation — are required to be city voters.
Leece made her own motion with those stipulations, but it was denied.
Spurred by Leece’s suggestion, the four other council members voted to ensure that Senior Center commissioners are Costa Mesa residents. They do not have to be city voters.
Frequent council critic Tamar Goldmann, a senior, said she didn’t trust any new group created by council majority.
“Every commission formed by this council majority has been stacked to provide the answers you want to hear,” she said.
The matter will require a second vote Nov. 18 before final adoption.
Earlier this year, the city began taking over the Senior Center operations after board members and an independent audit predicted that the center would run out of general fund money by June. The audit called the situation a “fiscal crisis.”
The center also had fundraising problems — a gala in October 2013 had a net loss of $2,000 — declining membership revenue and several board members quitting out of frustration.
Until the city takeover, which was completed by September, the center had been run as a nonprofit corporation with its own board of directors. Though independent of City Hall, city coffers considerably aided the center, with $240,000 in annual funding and hundreds of thousands of dollars in in-kind services each year.
The corporation was also able to use the 20,000-square-foot city-owned facility, which opened in 1992, at 695 W. 19th St.
