Why did a persistent majority of the Mill Creek City Council wrest the plans for a senior center from the Senior Center Foundation? This majority led by Mayor Ryan and followed unfailingly by Mayor Pro Tem Bennetts have clearly lost sight of the original goal of helping the Senior Center Foundation create a senior center for Mill Creek residents. They have instead placed the efforts of the foundation as hostage to the tepid interests of Snohomish County elected officials.
Why would that majority superimpose their non-administrative leadership on a group who put together the idea, formed a group of volunteers, found a central site gratis, raised a bit of money and enlisted the contribution for design and architectural services?
While the entire City Council does recognize the need for a senior center as they say repeatedly, they certainly don’t intend to be the driving force in the project. They never have. It was always the foundation’s project. The Council doesn’t have the time, expertise or initiative to carry the project through.
So how have they, this uncompromising majority, chosen to proceed? They have ducked behind a hope that an uninvolved and financially overwhelmed County Council will somehow provide a partnership in the foreseeable future. They have instructed City Manager Tim Burns and city staff to provide a plan for development on a county site with funding through a parks taxing district.
Just because the foundation asked for some community dollars to aid in the fund-raising, it shouldn’t have the project taken out of its hands and sent to the county graveyard. The City Council should have given the Foundation some assurance of cooperative funding that they, in turn, could take to potential funding sources even if that promise of funding was contingent on the economy and the foundation’s progress. The Council should not have hijacked this grassroots project.
The seniors of today and tomorrow have seen the real possibility of a community asset slip into the fog of fuzzy priorities and mis-analysis at best and political hubris at worst.
Tim Masterson
Mill Creek
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