J.O.Y. Senior Center Needs Audit

As an ordinary citizen observing Millcreek’s J.O.Y. senior center, the conflict between the township supervisors and the seniors looks muddy and messy. I say that because the situation is as clear as mud, and it will be quite a mess to clean up.

Currently, the township says that items are missing from the senior center inventory. The seniors say the items, which they have in storage, belong to them. The Millcreek police are stuck with investigating the matter and say they’d hate to have to arrest senior citizens.

The same questions that I posed in August 2014 remain. A good way to answer these questions seems to be through an independent audit.

If some civic-minded CPAs could donate their time (prior to tax season), they could examine the transactions that took place from day one until the day the center closed. I, for one, would like to know about the transaction that took place when the seniors turned over the money, they had raised for 20 years, to the township. Or did they? I certainly don’t know. What I do know is that neither side has money to pay for an audit.

One way to sort this out is to determine how much money the seniors contributed to the center and how much money the township put in. Then, even though it doesn’t seem likely that any formal agreement was made between the township and the seniors, an equitable dissolution of the assets could be achieved.

None of this would have been necessary though, if both sides had worked together. Was there really no indication that the township was concerned with the cost of the center before the May 2014 meeting? If so, the supervisors should have communicated better. If not, both sides should have put their heads together to work something out in a collegial manner before this whole thing blew up. Township resources now are being used to deal with the fallout, and the seniors are meeting at a fire station.

As a mere taxpayer of Millcreek, my opinion is that the township should support the senior citizens, and I sincerely hope that the supervisors will make good on their promise to revisit the situation “when the dust settles.” If that happens, I hope the seniors will be gracious. That being said, I don’t see a problem with the seniors continuing to raise money for a senior center, but if both sides can sit down together and LISTEN to each other, their collected resources will result in a better solution than if each works independently.

In any case, there still needs to be an audit.

Ann Silverthorn (Twitter: @annsilverthorn) is a blogger who also writes about a wide variety of topics in numerous genres, including non-fiction, fiction, poetry, travel, and grant writing.