As talks began this week between the Issaquah Valley Senior Center Board of Directors and the city of Issaquah, tensions boiled over at the board’s Oct. 11 meeting when senior center members explained why they have been so unhappy with the center’s service in recent years.

On Oct.12, five members of the senior center board met with Issaquah Mayor Fred Butler, City Administrator Bob Harrison, Human Services/Social Sustainability Coordinator Martha Sassorossi and Councilmember Mary Lou Pauly to discuss how best to provide for Issaquah’s seniors. Harrison reported that the Oct. 12 meeting went well and was “a very productive conversation.”

“We had a very productive meeting about how we can continue to enhance senior services,” Harrison said. “That’s always been [the city’s] goal, to provide excellent service to seniors.”

The city has reached out to the board requesting meetings multiple times since the Issaquah City Council voted to stop funding the senior center in February, following a swarm of controversy at the center in 2015. Although the city no longer includes the Issaquah Valley Senior Center in the list of nonprofits it funds, the city continues to lease the senior center building to Issaquah Valley Seniors for free, and says that it remains committed to aiding Issaquah’s seniors.

Harrison said he is hopeful about working with the senior center board further and called additional meetings in the future “a definite possibility.”

Meanwhile, at the board meeting the day before, talk once again turned to Executive Director Courtney Jaren’s sudden resignation. The board had announced last month that Jaren resigned at the end of August, but could not give any further details.

At the Oct. 11 meeting, which longtime senior center member Mayor Butler attended, the board maintained that it knew nothing about Jaren’s resignation.

“The reason for her resigning is an unknown reason — we don’t know,” Vice President Carmen Llewelyn stated. She added that “we can’t plan for a new director because we don’t have the funding.”

Llewelyn and board President Craig Hansen said that they are serving as interim directors, as per a vote by the board. In the meantime, the board would like to add a third office staffer to the two already in place.

Senior center member Jeannette Hudson told the board members they were “letting these young kids run the place.”

In the wake of Jaren’s departure, emotions came to a boiling point as seniors observing the meeting let loose with their complaints about the way the senior center has been run, starting off with the fact that all activities were closed between Sept. 26 and Oct. 5.

“You elected to choose 10 days to close operations and I resent it,” Reva Turtel said.

“When will things function like they used to? We used to have wonderful programs,” Madeline Harris said.

The board said that it had to close during that time to focus on its annual Salmon Days sale. Llewelyn said that the senior center made approximately $6,000 of much-needed funds during the sale.

In correspondence with the board, the city had called the sale a “flea market” that was unauthorized under the terms of the lease. However, Harrison noted that the board did attain the appropriate permit after being told to do so.

New allegations against Jaren’s behavior also surfaced at the meeting, as seniors brought forth lists of grievances that went back years, in some cases.

Harris said that while volunteering at a senior center event, Jaren had asked Harris to lay her (Harris’s) coat over two chairs to reserve a spot for Jaren. When Harris came back, her coat was gone. According to Harris, Jaren had rudely thrown her coat in another room and and called her “insane.”

“These are the things that happened, why people didn’t want to volunteer,” Harris said. “You’d work hard, work hard and then she was mean to you.”

In Jaren’s goodbye letter, published in the center’s October newsletter, the former director said, “I hope you will remember me with love, just as I will remember you. You will always be in my heart. I believe we will meet again, in this world or the next.”

Llewelyn claimed that the board had no idea of what had been taking place between the director and the seniors, and would have intervened.

“You saw things we didn’t see,” she said.

“After a while you saw what was going on,” Hudson told the board. “We’re very loyal, until we see something that isn’t right.”

“It’s the stuff that has gone on since Courtney (Jaren) came …,” Turtel said. “And the people on the board have been part of the abuse.”

Llewelyn did acknowledge that the board could have done a better job of encouraging people to come forth with complaints about the way the center was run. She surmised that seniors must have not informed the board for fear that the board members would ally with Jaren, and she told the seniors that this would not have been the case.

However, earlier in the meeting, Llewelyn had said that when Councilmember Paul Winterstein had met with the board in late 2015 to work with the senior center and “made it clear that [Jaren] had to go,” the board had not been willing to send Jaren away.

Llewelyn maintained that this change in opinion over Jaren was the major conflict between the board and Winterstein before the city voted to revoke funding to the center.

However, seniors pointed out that the board’s changing of its bylaws in December 2015 was what lost the center its funding.

“Paul Winterstein was hurt because he tried to work with the board … and you changed the bylaws on him,” Hudson said. “He tried to work with you people.”

“I saw the updated bylaws that were provided, which I learned … happened concurrent of the time that I was personally working with them to come to the agreement that we did sign, and I was never made aware of those changes,” Winterstein had said at the Feb. 1 council meeting. “When I saw those changes, I realized how fragile my trust in that organization and that leadership was, and I could not support that.”

Board member Ken Kenyon encouraged the seniors to share their opinions and experiences with the board.

“If there are some things that are not right, come to us … meet with us … I think we can do a better job,” he said.

“We loved [the senior center], but now … lately I’m thinking of moving someplace else,” Hudson said.

At the end of the meeting, Butler addressed the 20 or so senior center members who were at the meeting. Butler noted that rumors had been circulating that the city was going to shut down the center.

“There is absolutely no credibility to that,” he said. “The city is not going to close the center down.”

Turtel said that “the members of the board have provided the rumor and undermined our work here.”

Butler did say that if “the board is no longer to provide an appropriate level of senior services,” then a city staffer would take on the role of senior center director.