February 24, 2006

PRNS taking steps to save community centers

By Carol Rosen
Staff Writer

Rumors have swirled over the last couple of months that the city is in the process of closing many of its community centers. While it’s true that the deficit is making it harder to run many of these facilities, the Department of Parks, Recreation and Neighborhood Services in doing its best to save 34 senior and community centers throughout San Jose.

“The last thing we want to do is close these centers”, said Maria Hurtado, former deputy director of Community Services for PRNS. “We didn’t anticipate the downturn in the economy and we will continue to see budget cuts for the next couple of years. Our desire is to be creative and not close these centers. We’ve determined that we can partner with agencies and schools to run these centers.”

PRNS has chosen hub centers for each district in the city. Evergreen’s hub is the Evergreen Community Center on San Felipe Road. This center will remain staffed by city personnel. Two others, Millbrook and Meadowfair, are among the 34 that are currently undergoing a Request for Qualifications (RFQ) process for reuse. In other words, the city is working to find partners to run these centers.

The city is looking at several possible changes before it considers closing the centers. These include alternate city operations, such as returning the centers to park lands and alternative public interest, non-profit and for-profit groups to run the centers. In fact, Cynthia Bojorquez, assistant to the city manager, who is working on the program, noted that the Strong Neighborhood Initiative will take over operation of the Hoffman/Via Monte Center.

“I don’t believe the city has completed the first steps in the Request for Qualifications (RFQ) process for reuse,” said Ravia Chaudhry, from District 8 City Council member Dave Cortese’s office. But “there are always non-profit [organizations] interested in using the space,” she added.

At this point, the city hasn’t issued anything about the facility reuse, she said. A task force already has gone through the centers and held a number of meetings to determine how each community feels. Once they have digested all that information, they will present a plan to the City Council in March or April, added Bojorquez.

Staffing, budget reductions
In 2001-02, the PRNS staffing level for these centers was at its peak with 149 full-time equivalent (FTE) employees and an annual budget from the General Fund of about $10 million. This year, 2005-06, the staff has been cut to 75 FTEs with a $6 million budget allocation.

It’s nearly impossible to run the district hub community centers and the 34 designated facilities PRNS currently has in service with that tiny budget.

“It is necessary in order to preserve the usefulness and community service character of our community center sites and to minimize the impact of the facilities closures,” to develop a facilities re-use strategy, according to the PRNS proposal to the City Council.

The strategy is that during the fiscal crisis with the resultant decrease in resources, the city can rely on partnerships with schools, non- and for-profit agencies and the community. In other words, third party groups have expressed interest in expanding their services through use of some of the city’s community centers.

“It’s the last [and best] alternative to closure,” said Hurtado. “No one wants to see any of our community or senior centers close. The goal is to ensure a fair and open process with opportunities for stakeholder involvement providing the maximum benefit to the city.”

New idea
It’s a brand new idea, “no other city has done this,” she added. In order to make the project work and to make it work more easily, PRNS determined five phases that are necessary to make the plan happen.

The first phase is facility selection and assessment. This already completed phase assessed the condition of these sites looking at the centers to determine what, if any, costs would be necessary to bring them up to Americans with Disability Act standards and/or what system upgrades are needed; i.e. heaters.

The second phase, which began in January and was concluded earlier this month, consisted of community meetings to determine the importance of these centers to the community. Residents of these areas were asked to tell task force representatives why their centers are important.

The task force, according to the PRNS plan, includes a broad cross section of city and community representatives. The representatives attended the community sessions to have multiple opportunities to derive community input.

Broad membership
Task force members include representatives from PRNS; the library; youth, senior and disability commissions; project area committees from the Strong Neighborhood Initiative, United Way; San Jose State; General Services, the business community; the Community Foundation of Silicon Valley; a union representative; faith-based organizations; and school districts.

A total of nine community meetings were held throughout the city’s 10 districts in January and February. The final meeting, on Feb. 11, was open to everyone and held on a Saturday morning so anyone who wanted to could attend.

Bojorquez says the community meetings were extremely productive. “We’ve captured a lot of information from these meetings,” she said. If more than one group expresses interest in a center, Bojorquez said the task force will encourage the groups to collaborate. “We’ve gotten a good response so far. If the groups combine it will provide a range of services at each of the community centers,” she added.

Data review
Once the community-input process was completed in mid-February, the task force began reviewing all the data. Hurtado said the plan is to review the meeting data in March and April, select the non-profit operators in May and June, in order to conduct contract negotiations over the summer allowing the non-profits to begin their service by October.

However, once the recommendations are completed, likely in March or April, they will go before City Council members for a vote. “

“The city will provide 49 employees, but they will be concentrated in the larger facilities, like the Evergreen Community Center, leaving 6.75 FTEs to run the remainder of the district. We will partner with others to run the other satellite centers. This is a cost-neutral strategy. The agencies will pick up some operating costs, like janitorial services and the city will upgrade the facilities through Measure P,” Hurtado added.