An ongoing schism within the membership of the Issaquah Valley Senior Center turned into a flurry of action last week, culminating in Issaquah Mayor Fred Butler telling senior center leadership his grant recommendation for 2016 will come with conditions.
On July 28, the city’s human services commission heard public comment from Issaquah and Sammamish seniors both for and against the senior center’s board of directors and executive director.
Opponents of senior center leadership — a group including former city councilor David Kappler and former board member and active Issaquah Veterans of Foreign Wars quartermaster David Waggoner — alleged the center had reduced its services, improperly trespassed members, governed without transparency and created an environment intended to chill free speech and dissent.
Waggoner was trespassed from the center earlier this year and one longtime member, Reva Turtel, said she and her son’s names had been added to a publicly posted list of people who had called Mayor Butler about concerns with the center. Turtel, a Sammamish resident, said she had even been the target of anti-Semitism from other members.
“My sister and I are called ‘The Bagel Sisters,'” she said during the human services commission meeting.
Current senior center board members fired back that the allegations were fabrications coming from a disgruntled minority of members and that the repercussions of their communication with the city could threaten funding and damage services for the majority.
“I really don’t know what the problem is,” senior center board president Craig Hansen said. “I have no idea. I have no idea how it got to this point where our funding is in question.”
A major point of contention during the public comment session was the content of a letter published in the June 30 Issaquah Senior Center newsletter, written by senior center executive director Courtney Jaren and the members of the center’s board of directors, directly responding to an article in the Issaquah Press about Waggoner’s trespass as well as subsequent protest of the action by Kappler. The letter referenced a “conspiracy” against the center’s leadership and staff, perpetrated by members whom had participated in “bullying, elder abuse, conversion of center assets for personal uses, defamation, and the protracted sabotage of [the center’s] kitchen and computers.” The letter went on to allege a group of senior center members had “bull[ied] a vulnerable senior to death.”
Inez Petersen, an attorney representing some of the senior center’s members pro bono, called the content of the letter “outrageous libelous allegations” in a July 29 letter to Mayor Butler (link goes to letter).
Petersen’s letter included photos of three posters she said had been hung in the center, apparently as a counter-campaign against seniors whom had contacted the city.
One of the posters used a crudely drawn cartoon of a senior center staffer to apparently satirize mismanagement allegations. A second consisted of a poem referencing the alleged bullying death of a senior.
The third poster solicited seniors’ signatures to indicate they were against those “who seek the closure of … the activities and presence of the Issaquah Valley Senior Center.”
The ongoing controversy has led senior center leadership to seek financial security for the facility.
According to a letter sent by the mayor to the senior center, dated July 30, senior center leadership requested guaranteed city grant support for the next five years on July 15.
Mayor Butler responded that grant funding could not be given on more than an annual basis, or without city council oversight and awareness of changing fiscal environments.
Butler went on to write that he intended to recommend a $99,000 grant for the senior center in 2016, but only under a minimum of seven conditions.
Those conditions included:
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splitting the senior center’s contract into two six-month terms over 2016;
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a third-party audit of the senior center, the findings of which would be acted upon by June 1, 2016;
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senior center compliance with performance metrics to be determined by the city;
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“well publicized” annual membership meetings;
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the appointment of a city representative to the senior center’s board of directors;
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a contract that defines allowable and disallowable uses of city grant funds;
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and compliance with all city leases and other agreements.
Butler additionally asked his letter be posted publicly in the senior center to dispel myths that the city intended to close the senior center.
“If the Issaquah Senior Center determines that it does not want to agree, or comply with these conditions, then I will not recommended [sic] funding the Issaquah Senior Center in my 2016 proposed budget,” Butler wrote.
Here’s the Mayor’s letter, below:
