Senior Center Committee
Meeting Minutes -- July 19, 2007
Councillor Veno calls the meeting to order, indicating that all members of the Committee are present, except for Paul Lanzikos, Denis Coleman, Barbara Cleary.
Councillor Veno calls for working group reports.
Councillor Lovely reports for the public input committee, saying that the survey is done and in process of being printed in English and Spanish. They are still working on Russian. She also indicates that it is on city website, also North Shore Elder Services website. A number have already been turned in at city hall and COA, and Paul Lanzikos has 20 returned to him.
Councillor Lovely asks members of the committee to drop them off at various locations, with copies of the survey, and gets several volunteers.
Dr Curtin indicates that he will bring surveys to some doctors’ offices. Teasie Riley-Goggin says she’ll drop boxes off at Crosby’s and Steve’s Market, and Councillor Lovely says she’ll drop one of at the Library.
Councillor Lovely says that the working group needs help coordinating pickup at locations. We will leave the boxes and surveys out through the end of August, giving the public an opportunity to fill them out and return them. Also 11,000 will go out with water bill the week of August 1st at the suggestion of Jason Silva in the Mayor’s office.
Councillor Lovely asks whether we also want to send out in Salem News or Gazette. There will be 14,000 surveys distributed, and hopefully we’ll get a decent amount back.
Councillor Veno says that Chris Cassidy from the Salem News had inquired about the work of the committee, and particularly about the survey, and that he suggested to him that he get in touch with Councillor Lovely. Councillor Lovely indicates that she has not yet heard from him. Councillor Veno mentions that perhaps the Salem News can report where people can get the survey and return it.
The Mayor’s office has a press release too that was released.
Councillor Lovely asks whether there is funding available for sending this out through Gazette or Salem News, indicating that NS Elder Services has agreed to donate $100 for this.
Mayor Driscoll asks “do you think it’s worthwhile?” and suggests that we see how it goes with other distribution methods already in please and then we can see if it’s necessary.
Teasie Riley-Goggin asks whether it’s going in to Senior Power too. I see lots of those are left in different places. Should we put them in all of those if they’re not all distributed?
Councillor Lovely says the quote from the Salem News was $420, and Gazette was $670.
Teasie Riley-Goggin indicates that the water bill will go to almost everyone.
John Walsh mentions that the only problem is that the water bill only goes to owner.
Councillor Lovely says that maybe at the end of August we see where we are, and then perhaps consider doing something else if we need to.
Teasie Riley-Goggin asks the public in attendance if they think it would be okay to do go this way. Those who reply indicate that we can wait and see.
Councillor Veno thanks the public input working group for their hard work in getting the survey completed and distributed, highlighting how important this element is to the success of the committee’s work.
There are no further comments on the public input working group report.
Councillor Veno moves to the Site Analysis Working Group.
John Walsh reports for the Site Analysis working group, indicating that for now, they’d like to focus on city-owned sites.
John Walsh says that we’re coming to the moment where we’ll need assistance to look at the land. I personally think that list is still too long, and that we don’t want to have to ask someone to come in and do a thorough review of 6-7 properties.
Mayor Driscoll states that she thinks we need to think about ways we can use in-house folks or others in the city to do the review that’s needed. We don’t have the money to do feasibility analysis on 6-7 sites. Maybe there are engineers or architects in town who can give us the pros and cons, do their “drive-by overview of sites.” This is not a geotechnical review, but more of an architectural review, which might help us get the list down to three. Do all but the real expensive sampling and testing.
John Walsh indicated that he thinks we need to be at 3, that that number would be manageable, a working number, so that people can look at it and reasonably make a decision.
Tony Salvo says that there is only problem with private sites. They cost a lot of money. Should we consider privately owned land or not? I don’t think we should. I think we should just consider the privately owned sites. We should stick with the publicly owned land.
John Walsh says “I concur.”
Frank Clocher says “I agree.”
Councillor Lovely says that there is one consideration in regards to privately owned land, which is that it allows us to consider the possibility of making a new center as part of a public-private partnership with someone who wants to develop land. “When you say private land, I completely agree, I don’t think there’s any acquisition cost whatsoever, we don’t have the money, but I don’t think we want to completely dismiss it off the table.”
John Walsh says “no, I don’t want to take off table,” but says that we should pursue the public land first and get a preliminary assessment from an expert, and if it looks like it’s a go, you don’t have to deal with the private land.
Councillor Lovely says that’s a good approach.
Teasie Riley-Goggin asks whether we will still contact Salem State students to help with the next step of site assessment.
Mayor Driscoll says that that’s not the kind of work those students do. What we need here is different from that. In terms of soil testing, you have to hire someone to do that.
Let’s reach out to someone to do this on a voluntary basis.
Teasie Riley-Goggin asks the Mayor if we have anyone on a volunteer list who could do this.
Mayor Driscoll says yes, as we had someone do the assessment on this building (5 Broad Street). What we need is more architectural, what we need is an assessment of what we need for the building access-wise, elevation-wise, space-wise, etc. We need someone who can take half a day touring sites getting a sense of what we’re trying to do.
Councillor Veno says that if the Mayor provides a list of these people, he will do the outreach to these people as chair.
John Walsh indicates the working group needs guidance from the committee….we don’t know right now how big the building should be, what square footage is needed, how many cars can it accommodate, etc. Should it be 19,000 square feet, 24,000 square feet?
Frank Clocher says that we need copies of the plans from the other projects.
Councillor Veno indicates that the programming/use working group has copies of some of them, and needs to work with Doug to get the plans from Danvers, Beverly and Peabody. He also says that the programming/use working group has more work to do to gather the site requirements information to the committee.
Tony Salvo says that parking is really important, and “if there’s not enough, it’s kind or worthless,” saying further that 150 parking spaces is plenty, and that we do have some locations that have plenty of space for parking.
Pat Curtain says that when we visited Peabody, the larger of the three facilities, they were working on 5 acres, with 25,000 square feet for the building and 250 parking spaces. It seemed to me that might have been a lot of that space was underutilized. Point that maybe we set the figure at 20,000 square feet with room to expand. Danvers was considerably smaller. John is right, we need to have somewhat of a figure.
John Walsh says that he thinks 20,000 square feet is the right figure.
Pat Curtain says yes, and that allows room to grow. I guesstimate of somewhere around 150-200 spaces is ideal, on site and in the immediate area, especially with public transportation is involved. In order to narrow the search down to 5-7 sites, there’s no sense in spending time on a site that just can’t accommodate that. I think a 20,000 square foot building is a reasonable place to start.
Councillor Veno says that this is certainly in the ballpark range of what had been previously planned for.
Pat Curtain says that if you come up with a figure, you could go to someone with expertise and they can tell you whether that would work here.
John Walsh says that we saw Peabody, then Beverly and Danvers. Danvers is 15,000 or less. It was nice, but a just a teeny bit small for us. That’s how I come up with 20,000, between the big and small.
Teasie-Goggin says that we also have to consider what programs are going to incorporate into a new senior center.
John Walsh says that’s what we need from the programming/use working group.
Councillor Veno says that it would be great to have more specific information on the other sites that we visited.
John Walsh says that we have the list of sites A-F, do we want to maintain or cut out any?
Teasie Goggin asks John Walsh if he can look at the list and eliminate some. John says that, me personally, I wouldn’t look at Church Street or Mack Park, and I wouldn’t look at Gallows Hill. But that’s me…not the committee. If the committee agrees, someone can make a motion.
Councillor Veno says that the consensus from the last meeting on this topic seemed to be to keep the longer list, and let the further analysis weed out sites. But what I’m hearing now is that 7 is now not small enough.
John Walsh says that if someone’s going to volunteer their time, it’s not fair to give them a list of 7 sites. That’s my opinion.
Mayor Driscoll suggests that we rate them 1-7, and have the professional start at the top and see where that leads us. Church Street, to me, has no appeal to me, with parking right now.
Councillor Veno says that Church Street remained on the list so that we could have at least one downtown location to present as a possible site for future public input.
Teasie Goggin says that Church Street keeps coming up, perhaps because it was one of the first sites that was mentioned, but it seems to stick in people’s heads.
Councillor Veno says that, at least for me, the two Fort Lee sites rise to top of the list.
Mayor Driscoll suggests that if these two sites are the top two, let’s focus on getting someone to look at the top two, while keeping the rest on the list.
Teasie Riley-Goggin says “let’s do it”.
John Walsh says that there’s not a person I’ve spoken to who hasn’t jumped with joy at the possibility of it being there.
John Walsh moves that the Fort Ave and Memorial Drive sites be chosen for further site review by a site engineer, seconded by Teasie Riley-Goggin.
Tony Salvo asks if we included the soccer field too
Pat Curtain said no, as it is park land and felt that it was not viable to turn that over.
Councillor Veno indicates that this site is not on the list of six recommended sites.
John Walsh responds that residents on Memorial Drive right across the street from this site will not like that, as it will block their view, which makes this site problematic.
Councillor Veno moves John Walsh’s motion, which passes unanimously.
Councillor Veno says that the public input working group will meet to gather more information for the committee. We can keep the next July meeting for the programming/use work group.
Councillor Veno suggests a dates for meetings during August, which are agreed to be, Thursday, August 16th and Wednesday, August 29th.
There is some discussion about the August 12th (date?) cookout at Winter Island cookout. Doug Bollen and Frank Clocher agree to work together to ensure that the survey is made available for everyone to complete, and that it be promoted well during the cookout.
The programming/use committee will meet on Wednesday, July 25th to develop information on basic building requirements (square footage, parking, etc) requested by other working groups.
Old/New Business
Frank Clocher distributes a Boston Globe article on green buildings
Teasie Riley-Goggin indicates that while building such green buildings tends to be more expensive in beginning, they tend to be less expensive to operate in the long run. She also indicates that there are grants out there available to help with the construction of such buildings that we might be able to access.
Public Input
Councillor Veno opens the meeting for input from the public. There is none.
A motion is made by Pat Curtin to adjourn, seconded by Teasie Riley-Goggin, which passes unanimously.
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