More discord and another resignation emanated recently from the South County Senior Center.
Newly elected senior center board president Rose Cantwell traveled to Edmonds’ City Council Tuesday, May 6 to complain about the actions of a board majority which she fears might try to silence her, she said.
No such plan is in place, said longtime board member and former board president Steven Stout.
Even still, controversy surrounding the center claimed another board member. Deryl Yocom resigned May 13, becoming the second board member in two months to announce his resignation. Yocom started serving in January, after he was nominated to his seat by the existing board majority.
“I am frustrated,” Yocom said, indicating the membership’s push for control has been destructive.
The dispute at the center has been long and complicated, but it began in October when popular executive director Farrell Fleming was fired despite the membership’s loud protest.
Fleming’s dismissal sparked a struggle for power between the board and a membership that wanted a voice in how the center was run. The board has nominated and elected its own members and officers for the center’s 40-year history.
After a legal settlement, a March 12 officer election was held. Nearly 600 people voted, and four rank-and-file members were promoted to officers of the board, including Cantwell and three other board officers.
Subsequent board meetings have been painful affairs for the new officers, as they have been on the lopsided and losing side of every controversial vote.
Stout said the votes shouldn’t be controversial.
The votes have been attempts to restate existing board policies, he said. The board’s new officers can benefit from getting the background on the policies, Stout said.
One such vote stated that bill payment is the center’s financial manager’s job, not the board treasurer. Similar measures have reduced the possibility for board micro-managing, Stout said.
“People have a chain of command,” he said. “Nobody wants their boss’s boss to come around and ask them to do stuff.”
Cantwell is afraid of other potential motions, including one which she said would remove her power to speak to the press without the consent of the board or center director Hallie Olson.
Stout denied any such motion was in the works — “Of course not,” he said — and Olson said any such motion would probably be illegal.
Still, the rumored motion highlights the distrust between the new board members and the existing board majority — a group called the “Old Guard” by Cantwell and her supporters.
After Cantwell’s comments at City Council May 6, Edmonds’ councilmembers denounced the disharmony, and the board majority which they called the “Old Guard.”
Councilmember Steve Bernheim is a member at the senior center, and has attended multiple senior center board meetings.
He said Cantwell’s election — she took nearly 80 percent of the vote — is a clear mandate for change.
“I think the Old Guard should liberalize their closed ways and stop what I would call their childish squabbling about a loss of power,” Bernheim said May 6. “I do not think the Old Guard is acting in good faith.”
Other councilmembers suggested the city should explore pulling its funding from the non-profit senior center, although Mayor Gary Haakenson said such a move would be “cutting off our nose to spite our face.”
The senior center’s building is owned by the city, and the city supports the center with about $60,000 a year. That money provides services that the city would have to fund another way, Haakenson said.
Reporter Chris Fyall: 425-673-6525 or cfyall@heraldnet.com
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