The Magnolia Community Center may see its hours slashed and its staff cut if the Seattle City Council adopts Mayor Mike McGinn’s new 2012 budget proposal.
In contrast, the Queen Anne Community Center would actually be open 10 additional hours a week under the new budget proposal.
George Hanson, president of the Magnolia Community Center Advisory Council, said that according to the current budget, the Magnolia Community Center (MCC) would lose more than 50 percent of its general access hours under the new budget proposal. The center’s five full-time Parks Department staff positions also would be reduced to four half-time positions and the center would experience reductions to its current operating account balance.
The advisory council is asking that local residents attend a public meeting at 6 p.m. on Nov. 8 at the community center (2550 34th Ave W.) and let their concerns be heard by representatives of the Seattle Parks Department.
The cuts are part of an attempt by City Hall to save $1.23 million from the city’s community center budgets. About $784,000 would come from reductions in the budget to run the city’s community centers. Another $446,000 would come from the Associated Recreation Council (ARC), which is the organization that runs many of the programs and classes held at the city’s community centers.
“This is not an acceptable way to save $1.23 million in the budget,” Hanson said. “They have given little public thought to creating other revenue streams. There has to be other solutions.”
“The importance of community participation at this meeting cannot be overstated,” Hanson said.
Councilmember Molly Burke reiterated how important it is for community members to attend this meeting.
“Residents need to get out there and talk about this issue or they are going to lose out,” Burke said.
Currently, the Magnolia Community Center is open about 63 hours a week. A large portion of that time includes programs and classes run by ARC. But the center also employs someone to oversee the front desk and keep the doors unlocked during these ARC programs so the general public can use the facility.
If the new budget goes through, Magnolia’s center will be cut to only 25 hours of general access time, which is when the general public can use the facility.
Many of the specifics of the program changes are not yet known because the proposal has not yet been discussed before the City Council. However, center officials confirm that it appears almost certain that some programs that are currently housed at Magnolia’s center will have to be moved to other community centers.
In an attempt to save money, the city has reorganized Seattle’s community centers into five major groups. Within each group, community centers have been assigned one of three tiers based on various criteria, including size of the facility and classes. The centers assigned to the top tier will be open 70 hours a week. The second tier centers will be opened 45 hours a week and the third-tier centers will be open 25 hours a week.
Magnolia was ranked a third-tier center. Queen Anne, which is in a different community center grouping was ranked a second tier facility and will see its open time increased to 45 hours a week in the new budget proposal.
Hanson said that he believes Magnolia was wrongly placed in the lowest tier based on faulty information the city was using to make its calculations. For one thing, the facility’s small footprint doesn’t take into consideration that the center has daycare programs and tun-o-fun after school program that are too large to fit in the center and access space that is part of the adjacent Catharine Blaine School.
“We are being penalized for the small amount of space we have, but we are actually using much more space than they realize,” Hanson said.
The center was also marked down on the city’s matrix for having fewer hardship scholarships than many other centers. Hanson said Magnolia shouldn’t be penalized for having more participation and fewer scholarships than other neighborhood centers.
“This is a vital community center, people patronize this center and we run in the black,” Hanson said. “We shouldn’t be penalized for that.”
Hanson is asking local residents to write letters to the mayor and to city council members voicing their displeasure with the proposed cuts and ask that if they must have a tiered system that Magnolia’s ranking be adjusted upward.
“If there has to be a tiered level of service, we are asking that we be moved to a 2-A, which give us 45 hours a week in service,” Hanson said. “We want to make sure everyone who can contacts city officials.”
[[In-content Ad]]