Quinn Says Bloomberg Should Slow Down on Senior Centers

By BENJAMIN SARLIN, Special to the Sun
April 9, 2008

Breaking with Mayor Bloomberg, the City Council speaker is asking that a proposed reorganization of the city's senior centers be revised and its implementation delayed. "We are worried and have urged the Department for the Aging to slow this process down," Speaker Christine Quinn, a likely candidate for mayor in 2009, told a crowd of elderly New Yorkers at a downtown Manhattan senior center yesterday.

Mr. Bloomberg announced a plan in January to charge senior centers with a more expansive set of responsibilities than providing meals, including running health and wellness programs, such as screening for illness or depression. The city says 44% of its 325 senior centers are underutilized, meaning they do not serve all their allotted meals, and that by consolidating them into hubs for a variety of senior services, rather than just food, they could attract more users.

Elected officials and senior advocacy groups have criticized the plan, saying the changes are too rapid and far-reaching for senior centers and senior citizens to adjust in time. Comptroller William Thompson Jr., a possible mayoral candidate in 2009, said last month that he had "strong concerns" about the planned changes, and asked the mayor to take "a more thorough and considered approach." The city's public advocate, Betsy Gotbaum, has also voiced her opposition to the plan, as have several council members. Ms. Quinn said yesterday that the DFTA should provide technical assistance for community groups currently serving the elderly so that they could more easily make the transition to the new requirements for senior centers. She added that a job bank should be created so that senior center workers would be able to find new employers if their current positions were eliminated through the restructuring.

A spokesman for the DFTA, Christopher Miller, said yesterday that the plan's implementation was being negotiated and its schedule has yet to be determined. "We've obviously been in conversation with the City Council and all the stakeholders involved," Mr. Miller said.