An ongoing public and legal battle between the Issaquah Senior Center and its ousted members spilled into the Issaquah City Council’s budget discussions Monday night.

Early in 2015, the senior center trespassed Regina Poirier and former board member David Waggoner for alleged elder abuse and harassment. Both have said repeatedly in public meetings and comments to the media that no formal elder abuse investigation has taken place and that they were actually banished for asking questions about the center’s finances. They are now pursuing a defamation lawsuit against the center’s board of directors and Executive Director Courtney Jaren, stemming from a statement in the July senior newsletter that “a group of seniors bull[ied] a vulnerable senior to death.”

“Frankly, I feel I am a victim of elder abuse,” Poirier told the Issaquah City Council Monday. “As a citizen, I have a right to the public documents of the Issaquah Valley Senior Center. After I was refused those documents, there was a clear plan to trespass me.”

Members of the city council have remained largely mum on the subject of the senior center, which is operated in a city building by the nonprofit organization Issaquah Valley Seniors. But during discussion at Monday night’s meeting over the mayor’s recommendations for the city’s nonprofit grant endowments for 2016, three city councilors expressed doubts about funding the senior center.

“Something’s broken,” Councilor Stacy Goodman said. “And I’d like to figure out what it is.”

Mayor Fred Butler announced in July that he would only recommend funding for the senior center under several conditions, including a third-party audit of the nonprofit and the mayoral appointment of a nonvoting city representative to the board of directors.

Under the plan, Issaquah Valley Seniors would receive half of its $99,000 grant request at the beginning of 2016, with payment of the other half to be voted upon by the city council after reviewing the center’s performance midyear.

The city of Issaquah’s grant makes up 43 percent of the Issaquah Senior Center’s operating budget, according to the organization’s grant application.

David Adler, an attorney representing Jaren and the senior center board, called the allegations by the senior center’s detractors “rumors, hearsay and innuendo.”

Councilor Tola Marts said the council should not address the personal allegations lobbed between the parties in the defamation lawsuit, but noted that many of the allegations lobbed by the plaintiffs in the lawsuit dealt specifically with the center’s use of public funds. He pointed specifically to one claim that the senior center had refused donations from the Issaquah Food and Clothing Bank, ending an ongoing relationship between the two organizations.

“I would have to consider what happened there before I could consider giving them a dime,” he said.

Council President Paul Winterstein said he questioned the merit of continuing to fund the senior center, even under conditions.

“I think there’s enough factual information available to us … that they’re not in line with our values,” Winterstein said. “At this point, I cannot support any funding for the senior center.”

In a letter to the Reporter, senior center member and former Issaquah City Council candidate Kate Kaluzny said she supported Mayor Butler’s conditional funding plan and did not agree with proposals to end senior center funding or form a new nonprofit corporation to manage the senior center.

Kaluzny also noted that there were 800 paying members of the senior center and only about 10 detractors on the plaintiff’s side of the lawsuit.

“If things are bad, persuade the membership to change direction by electing people who promise the wanted changes,” she said. “Why talk about cutting off funding even before the Mayor’s [sic] solution has been tried? Where is the fire? Why the rush?”