It may not be a senior center, but the city of College Station's move to include seniors at the EXIT Teen Center is a step forward, community members have said.
Senior citizens have been working for more than a decade to convince elected officials of the need to designate a place for older residents to meet and host events.
The City Council's decision last month to alter the mission of the under-utilized facility on Rock Prairie Road to incorporate seniors was a positive one, members of the city's senior advisory committee said.
Council members unanimously voted to re-brand the Teen Center as a facility that would be used by seniors and youth on a time- and space-available basis and use senior volunteers to reduce the cost of programs and activities. The center will get a new name to better match the new functions.
Joanna Yeager, the chairwoman of the senior advisory committee, said the panel recommended re-branding the center but wanted to ensure that teenagers would be able to continue using the facility.
Yeager said seniors had already been using the Teen Center to some extent and felt it was logical to designate the space for their use during school hours.
"I thought it was a very good idea," she said. "It would give us a place that we can meet anytime during that 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. period, and we can have a start to a senior center in College Station finally after 12 years."
Yeager said the group's desire to have their own senior center may never be realized, but seniors have never been opposed to the idea of an inter-generational facility.
"We really hope that it's a steppingstone. We really do," she said. "We are not being over-optimistic about anything. We're willing to accept whatever the city will give us to have a place to meet."
Voters rejected a $7.4 million proposal in the 2008 bond election for a community center that would have met the needs of senior citizens.
Mayor Pro Tem John Crompton and council members Dennis Maloney and Dave Ruesink also voted to remove $70,000 from the EXIT Teen Center's funding and create a separate account so any revenues generated would go to the center and not the city's general fund.
Mayor Nancy Berry and Councilwoman Katy-Marie Lyles voted against that motion.
David Schmitz, parks and recreation assistant director, said the center was opened in 1999 and originally focused on 12- to 18-year-olds. In 2002, the facility became more of a multi-use center, allowing other programs to occur while the teens weren't there, and a year later, the focus turned from teens to those in the sixth to eighth grade, he said.
"This is the group that, what the school district has to offer, they're not interested in that," he said.
The center has one full-time staff member and about 12 part-time employees, he said. In fiscal year 2009, the center had more than 23,300 visits, an average of 90 people a day. During that time period, individual participants included 525 teenagers, 148 seniors and more than 560 people that fall into the "other" category.
The EXIT Teen Center operated on a budget of just more than $200,000 in fiscal year 2010, bringing in $3,000 in revenue.
Crompton said the change was an opportunity to restructure a business model that was "hopelessly wrong." Crompton stressed the importance of the center being able to raise its own funds and that all revenue go back into an account specifically for the facility.
"This is a crisis that creates an opportunity for us to manage it," Crompton said.
Berry said she voted against the motion to establish a separate account for the center because she didn't want to move forward with changes to the financial operations without first hearing about the advantages and disadvantages to such a move from city staff members.
Maloney said during the council meeting that he also wanted city staff members to look into what a fee structure would look like for the senior citizens who use the facility.
"This is incredibly heavily subsidized, and we're not reaching everyone we could be reaching," he said. "Thirty-seven kids a day, to me, is a colossal failure."
Ron Silvia, former mayor and a senior advisory committee member, said the facility won't accomplish everything a true senior center would, but the use of the center is a good compromise.
"We realize with the way things are today, there's no way we can get a separate senior center," Silvia said.
"What we were really concerned about is that we don't want the teens to leave," he said.
Silvia said one of his disappointments as mayor was not being able to meet the needs of older residents.
"We have a great community. We take care of all of our people. Yet I just can't get a senior center for these folks," he said.
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