City Hall – Councilman Simcha Felder (D-Brooklyn) along with Speaker Christine Quinn (D-Manhattan) and James Vacca (D-Bronx), Chair of the Council’s Senior Centers Committee, as well as his colleagues in the City Council, delivered 14,000 petitions to Mayor Bloomberg calling on him to protect senior centers throughout the city. The petitions are in response to the Mayor’s senior center modernization plan that could result in the closing of up to 85 neighborhood senior centers. The Mayor’s plan calls for a creation of 15-30 comprehensive wellness centers to regionalize senior center services throughout the city. The new plan would take funding and resources away from neighborhood senior centers for the new bigger regional centers.

“Now is not the time to divert funding and resources from neighborhood senior centers to new mega-senior centers. We simply do not have the money to fund any of these new mega-senior centers without closing down existing neighborhood centers,” said Councilman Felder. “Seniors don’t want to go halfway across Brooklyn to visit a senior center. They want to have a convenient senior center nearby.”

Councilman Felder delivered 1,000 petitions from local senior centers to Councilman Vacca with Joan Pastore of AMICO and Rabbi Heineman from the Brookdale Senior Center. These petitions, along with the 14,000 from elsewhere in the City

“As you can see from the thousands of petitions submitted today, the city’s modernization plan has struck fear into thousands of elderly New Yorkers at exactly the same time when they are struggling with an increased cost of living and broader budget cuts,” said Council Member James Vacca.  “This is simply the wrong plan at the wrong time with the wrong funding stream, and when we ask why the city cannot accomplish the same goals without upending our existing network of centers, no one has an answer. Together, we are gathered here with one message: Leave our senior centers alone.”

(YWN Desk – NYC)