To say the last week in Washington has been contentious between senior citizens and the bureaucracy in the City would be putting it mildly. Besides causing massive division in the community, the city's lack of transparency in its attempt to force a local museum room into the Senior Center downtown's second floor has backfired in epic proportions.
All the way back in May, the city approached members of the history community with the idea of creating a museum on the second floor of the Grace Martin Harwell Senior Center. Only there was one problem with this; they didn't care enough to tell the seniors about it or ask how they felt about it. Ignorant to the fact the the second floor not only hosts minority owned businesses, a juvenille justice assistance center and meetings ranging from grief counseling, tax assistance and health care insurance assistance for those aged 55 and up, the city in its infinite wisdom decided to put out bids to demolish the 2nd floor and put in a local history musuem.
Caught in the crossfire were those working on the Port of Washington Project who had no idea that the city never felt the need to consult the seniors on how they felt. Well the seniors felt like this: HELL NO! The senior center is a home away from home for hundreds of seniors from Washington and across the county and has an excellence rating from the State of North Carolina. It is some of the only socialization that the seniors have and they provide much needed revenue for the downtown businesses when they journey to the center. It's a place of meetings, dances, clubs, socialization and fellowship.
But the city of course ignored all this as it frequently does on many public issues because the Good Ole Boy network thinks including public input simply doesn't matter. They didn't count that they crossed the wrong people this time. Seniors organized and quickly by informing the media, protesting, showing up in force at a city council meeting prepared to fight. The city's response was to equivocate, use smooth langauge and make contradictory statement. Even as the city interviewed with WITN and tried to claim they were limiting their eyes to the second floor (which is egregious enough), City Manager Jonathan Russell admitted to the reporter that the City was still considering building a new Senior Center and relocating the seniors which is something they are adamantly opposed to.
The seniors ranged from Republicans to Democrats to Independents, black, white and latino, younger members and more seasoned memebers and they made it clear they weren't backing down. Today, July 15th, they confronted Mayor Donald Sadler directly and got him to back down. He's agreed to tell the City Manager to reject all bids to demolish the 2nd floor and to leave the seniors ALONE!
Has the city learned its lesson? Doubtful. The lack of transparency of the City government is stunning and their desire to not seek public input on very important issues is at the heart of my own campaign for City Council. I've personally filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the City Clerk to provide ALL communications regarding the Senior Center between Mayor Donald Sadler and City Manager Jonathan Russell both written and electronic which by force of law they must comply with. The voters will determine ultimately if we need a change of the guard so that we can restore public participation and stop this looking down the nose at the peasants approach to public policy.
This also should not signal the end for a new local history museum. There should be another location found for the museum and one that I personally would help raise funds for and would like the city to give seed money to in order to form an endowment to continue operations without relying on the government dole indefinitely. Many people of good character put a lot of effort into this project. Unfortunately the city misled them and our officials should be held accountable for treating the seniors as insignificant. In the end the Seniors Struck Back and the Empire Folded.
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