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Editorial
Senior coordinator's job must be a staff position
The task force appointed by the town council to look at needs of seniors in the community concluded that the most important step the town could take to improve services would be to hire a dynamic senior coordinator.
The community services commission took that report, chewed on it for a while and told the town council at a July 17 meeting that the town should hire a senior coordinator.
The town council listened to the report and seemed to be in agreement. More than one council member acknowledged that the town itself has never taken a strong role in senior services. There seemed to be general acknowledgment that the time has come to remedy that situation.
So we are puzzled by town staff's resistance to an idea whose time has finally come.
Staff continues to insist that contracting out the senior coordinator job is a better way to ensure that local seniors are well served. Now the staff wants to combine a case manager job with a senior coordinator position and turn it over to a social service agency.
This is a strategy destined for failure.
We know because the town has gone down that road before. With disastrous results. Anyone who doesn't remember when the Adult and Child Guidance Center moved its case managers off-site in 1998 and then pretty much walked away from its commitment to Los Gatos, should just ask one of the senior citizens who was around at the time what it was like.
The Senior Task Force made it clear in its report to the council that a senior coordinator on the town staff was the key ingredient in creating a successful program. The task force reached this decision after visiting many successful senior centers in other communities.
We couldn't agree more. In fact, we think it would be a mistake to tie a coordinator down with a case management work load. Creating a successful senior center in a community that has resisted it for so long will be a big challenge.
The person charged with this responsibility will need to make a full-time commitment to the task. The senior coordinator must be an administrator and a fundraiser, someone who knows how to make things happen. Unless this is the kind of commitment the town is willing to support, success will be elusive.
Cost is something that can't be ignored, of course. But the $40,000 budget recommendation was based on the faulty logic that the recreation department--operated by a joint powers authority of several school districts--could share the costs for the coordinator.
Although the Department of Community Education and Recreation does provide programming for seniors, it really won't work to merge funding with the town for a coordinator's salary.
While it's commendable that staff is trying to work within a budget, we believe what the community wants is a full-time senior coordinator on staff--even if it goes over the projected budget.
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Los Gatos, California Since 1881
