Today we’re re-visiting the Park Ridge Senior Center, that building belonging to the Park Ridge Recreation and Park District that’s attached to the bath house of Centennial Pool and which serves as a semi-private clubhouse to roughly 1,000 seniors, approximately 200 of whom reportedly are not even Park District residents or taxpayers.

The reason for this post is the recent controversy that has arisen over a contract the private corporation that effectively runs the Senior Center (on the public dole, of course), Park Ridge Senior Services Inc. (“Seniors Inc.”), is trying to force on the Park District in order to keep Seniors Inc. in control of the Senior Center for the foreseeable future.

In order to understand this post, a brief history lesson is in order – starting with the formation of Seniors Inc. on December 19, 1980.  It appears Seniors Inc. cut its first deal with the Park District back in 1987, in the form of a one and one-half page letter agreement signed by then-Park Board president Susan Rizzo and then-Seniors Inc. president Clare Craig. 

Under that agreement, the Park District obligated itself to match, dollar for dollar up to $350,000, all contributions made by or on behalf of Seniors Inc. toward the construction of a “South Addition” to the Senior Center.  Additionally, that agreement gave Seniors Inc. a non-exclusive “License for Use” of the Senior Center, terminable at the will of the Park District on 180 days notice, accompanied by the Park District’s reimbursement of Seniors Inc.’s contribution to the South Addition, amortized at the rate of 3.3% per year.

An undated one-page amendment to that letter agreement clarified some rights and obligations, but left the basic terms of the letter agreement intact.  And for the past 23 years, Seniors Inc. has had, in practice, virtually exclusive use of that facility.

According to our back-of-the-envelope calculation, 23 years of amortization at the annual rate of 3.3% for the maximum $350,000 contribution by Seniors Inc. produces a buy-down of 80% of that $350,000, leaving a buy-out amount of $70,000 that the Park District would have to pay should it choose to end Seniors Inc.’s monopoly of the Senior Center.

That seems fair enough to us, but apparently not to Seniors Inc.

All of the sudden, after 23 years under the letter agreement and amendment, Seniors Inc. is pushing the Park District to sign a six-page “Senior Center Non-Taxable License For Use Agreement” (let’s call it the “Sweetheart Deal”) negotiated for Seniors Inc. by Park Ridge’s most prominent insider and legal beagle, John “Jack” Owens, who also happens to be a Senior Center member and Seniors Inc.’s registered agent. 

Why the Sweetheart Deal? 

We’re guessing it’s because, after all these years, our public officials, the media, and the public are finally starting to pay attention to, and balk at, the hundreds of thousands of dollars in cost to the taxpayers of “business as usual” – maintaining this semi-private club while its “members” pay a measly $35 in annual membership “dues.”  Within the past few months the City Council pulled the $35,000 donation that Seniors Inc. had come to expect from City taxpayers, and the Park Board has started to think about either cutting back on its approximately $200,000 annual subsidy or generating additional revenue from the Center through non-senior programming.

So Seniors Inc. now wants to lock in a two-year term for its current monopoly.  And, apparently realizing that its original 1987 buy-out price is down to a manageable $70,000, it is insisting that the Park District agree to add another $331,377 to that schedule, purportedly representing “additional improvements made by [Seniors Inc.] since 1999,” even though the Sweetheart Deal doesn’t identify any existing reimbursement obligation of the Park District for those post-1999 improvements. 

Oh yeah: and Seniors Inc. gets the continuing benefit of a “Senior Center Manager” and other Park District staff members providing services at/for the Center…on the taxpayers’ dime, of course.

Not surprisingly, the Sweetheart Deal makes no mention of the millions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies the Senior Center has sucked out of the Park District, including a total of $993,000 just in fiscal years 2005 through 2010 alone!  Nor does it make any mention of the tens (hundreds?) of thousands of dollars it has sucked out of the City of Park Ridge at around $35,000/year, until the Mayor and City Council finally eliminated that “donation” this year. 

Given how far they have stuck their hands down into the taxpayers’ pockets and for how long, we have to wonder whether the folks at Seniors Inc. are clueless or just plain shameless in demanding anything from the Park District: they already have enjoyed over 23 years of control over one of the Park District’s (i.e., the taxpayers’) newer and better facilities, at a personal cost to each member of less than a dime a day!  For Seniors Inc. now to try to lock the Park District (i.e., the taxpayers) into a one-sided Sweetheart Deal is disappointing bordering on outrageous. 

But it will be an even bigger outrage if the members of the Park Board spinelessly give into this Sweetheart Deal and sell-out the public trust to their “Greatest Generation” (and “almost Greatest Generation”) counterparts in the process.

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