WESTFIELD – The City Council voted Thursday night to re-establish the position of program director at the Council on Aging Senior Center at Mary Noble estates and approved funding to fill that post for the remainder of the 2016 fiscal year.
COA Executive Director Tina Gorman said she was originally hired in 2006 to serve as the program director, but that the post has been vacant, and unfunded, since she was appointed to the executive director post.
Gorman performed the duties of both positions after her appointment as executive director.
Gorman said that she initially included funding in her current fiscal year budget, but that line item was deleted because of uncertainty as to when the senior center, which was under construction, would open. The official opening took place last weekend with a ribbon cutting ceremony.
Gorman said that another factor in the decision to wait to re-establish the program director post was that the growth in the number of senior citizens using those program was also unknown.
“Membership has swelled, we added 450 new members this fall and in December we’ve added another 170,” Gorman said, detailing numbers to justify inclusion of funding for a dedicated program director.
The city has a senior population of more than 8,000, so there are more senior citizens than children enrolled in the city’s school district.
“I can’t continue to do both jobs,” Gorman said. “We can have more programs now because we have the space. This is not a new position. We don’t have anyone on staff now, but there is a lot of interest, so I’m sure we can find someone in the community pretty quickly.”
The Finance Committee gave the full City Council a positive recommendation to fund the program director post with an appropriation of $17,909 for the six remaining months of the fiscal year. The council approved both the re-establishment of the post and the salary with unanimous 13-0 votes.
The council also approved an appropriation of $1,200 for a part-time custodian at the new senior facility to maintain the city’s investment of $6,324,625. The City Council approved a bond of $7 million which also includes the design and engineering costs associated with the construction project.
The new two-story, 20,000-square-foot facility is four times the size of the prior center located on Main Street. The facility also houses the city’s Veterans Affairs office, which had been located in a single office in the basement of City Hall.
