Letter to Birmingham

After over a decade of being a Next Board Director, I have resigned. I continue to wholeheartedly believe in the work that the dozens of volunteers and few paid staff perform for our community. They are a community asset and we are lucky to have them.

The reason for my timing is that I can no longer put on the “game face” needed to work toward developing a new Senior Center that is well on its way to being this city commission’s own North Old Woodward Project debacle that went down in flames at the polls in 2019. I know many members share my frustration but have succumbed to the fact that the city commission has gone off the rails and that the only possible deal will be difficult to swallow and a lopsided compromise, at best. It is ironic that several of the current commissioners campaigned on the North Old Woodward fiasco.

Let’s review the facts:

• The discussion on a permanent senior center has spanned decades. There never was any serious community-wide discussion on a general community center, nor was it contemplated in our Master Plan that involved thousands of residents.

• The YMCA Birmingham branch was deemed no longer financially viable due to decreasing enrollment and a decaying building so they sold the building to the city for $2M.

• The YMCA previously raised funds to renovate the Birmingham facility. The money raised however was diverted elsewhere and the money was not used to renovate the Birmingham YMCA. Further, they indicate their outreach doesn’t include our city.

• The city has NO obligation to the YMCA past June 2026.

• Force fitting the YMCA into this project devastates its viability:

• Will make the facility suboptimal for seniors.

• If properly sized would require paving a portion of the park for parking.

• Necessitates significant thrifting of needed elements for seniors to offset the YMCA burden.

• Nearly triples the amount of the bond request of the taxpayers.

• Burdens the city with significant risk by constructing a building for an outside organization who can’t even sign a real lease because of their dire financial situation (after we gave them $2M!).

The city commission’s strategic goals promised to “develop a plan for a permanent senior/community center to house Next senior services and to offer space for multigenerational programs.” No mention of being a benevolent developer and landlord for an independent organization that won’t contribute to any upfront cost.

When city manager Tom Markus lead the city in the purchase of the YMCA, he did so to simply provide our seniors a quality, permanent home like so many surrounding communities And, while I continue to appreciate the work the commission does for our community, this process has frankly become embarrassing. The initial missteps in hiring the right people unnecessarily wasted hundreds of thousands of taxpayer money and the majority of aware residents I interact with have noticed that the commission meetings have turned in to the equivalent of verbal waterboarding. Moreover, the financial frustrations of the commissioners are self-created as the project scope did not call for attaching a new YMCA to the modest Senior Center. Actually, the project has morphed into a YMCA with a small attached Senior Center since the dedicated space for the YMCA is more than twice that of Next.

Let’s take care of OUR seniors, let the YMCA and other private organizations take care of themselves. We have patiently waited for decades.

Stuart Jeffares

Birmingham

(Stuart Jeffares owns a local business and is a member of the Birmingham Planning Board)