Commission votes not to appraise land for new senior citizens center
The new Anderson County Senior Center on Edgewood Avenue in Clinton — which officially opened its doors last January — is already running out of space, county officials say.
Its parking lot and its center are filled to overflowing on most days, said Dist. 5 Commissioner Robert McKamey, who was instrumental in getting the Edgewood building for the seniors at the February Commission meeting.
McKamey was instrumental in getting the senior center on Edgewood.
The plan has been for some time to look at building a larger center, McKamey said.
According to McKamey, he has had several elderly residents come to him, asking about potential sites to put a new center, and they have exhausted all of these leads in the past year, he said.
“The county commission hasn’t been involved in the senior center except when we initially took it over. We’ve not had to. It runs well. The only problem is the size,” McKamey said.
It was announced by Finance Director Natalie Erb at the February commission meeting that the county’s budget committee made an amendment to a request that was to them at their February meeting to put up to $1,000 to go towards an independent commercial appraisal of land for a senior center.
“I’m not so sure we need to rush into this,” responded Dist. 8 Commissioner Myron Iwanski, “We may want to hold off on that appraisal until we’ve looked at some of those other options. If we need that appraisal my suggestion would be to amend the motion to have that appraisal done by Leslie Sellers for an amount up to $2,000 to be negotiated with him.”
The $2,000 would be used to hire Sellers to do the appraisal.
Dist. 3 Commissioner Steve Emert also expressed reservations about moving forward with an appraisal of land for the senior center, though, he said, he was all in favor of getting a new and larger facility for the county’s elderly residents.
“I’m not for taking tax dollars to do any appraisal right now until we exhaust all our resources. We’ve got a chance to do another facility and we’ve not even checked anywhere else. What we need to do first is exhaust all our resources then take the taxpayers’ money and then do an appraisal if these don’t work out,” said Emert.
Emert indicated the county also has an opportunity to purchase “a much bigger property” than what is being considered.
Where this larger property is located Emert did not say, nor did he or any other commissioner state which property they are considering purchasing for the site of a new senior center.
“Very little taxpayer dollars are in the senior center. The Office on Aging operates it and the senior center operates largely on federal and state grants,” countered McKamey, “We have to first own the property in order to get a grant.”
McKamey stated the county could apply for a CDBG grant for up to $315,000 to build a senior center if they have land to put it on.
“The senior center needs to be more centralized and better accessible. We have exhausted just about every lead on property,” McKamey said.
“No, we’ve not,” Emert replied.
Dist. 8 Commissioner Phil Yager made a motion to defer the appraisal for 60 days.
Commissioner voted 14 to 1 to defer the appraisal so they can look at more options. Commissioner McKamey voted “no.” Dist. 7 Commissioner Jerry Creasey was absent.