New Haven Independent

The city plans to close the center as part of a series of painful emergency budget cuts. The revised $455.7 million budget comes up for a final vote at the Board of Aldermen Monday night.

Shah, an administration loyalist, has helped shepherd through that budget as head of the board’s Finance Committee. He has generally supported it.

But he said he plans to back a plan to be offered Monday night by administration critics, aimed at saving the center. The center is in Shah’s district. The full Board of Aldermen is meeting to cast a final vote on the upcoming year’s budget.

“I don’t see the rationale” behind the closing, Shah said. “Why attack the seniors?”

The amendment, which Hill Alderman Jorge Perez said he intends to introduce ,would close the Westville Senior Center, off Fountain Street, instead of West River. The city plans to bus the West River seniors over to the Westville center instead.

Shah has generally sided with City Hall over Perez when the two sides have clashed, most notably when administration-backed candidate Carl Goldfield unseated Perez as board president.

West River seniors recently rallied at an aldermanic hearing in an effort to save their center, which is on Chapel Street near Norton. The city is trying to fire two staffers from the center for trying to help save it.

And 90 elderly residents of the nearby Berger Apartments signed a petition handed to Shah pleading for the center’s rescue. The Berger seniors consider the Westville center too far away.

“Let’s be honest,” Shah said. “Potentially that’s 90 votes I’m not going to have if that center closes.”

The city’s rationale for closing West River instead of Westville: It has to pay for utilities at West River, but not Westville. And more importantly, Westville has a bigger space, so it can accommodate the combined senior populations, unlike West River, said mayoral spokeswoman Jessica Mayorga.

“Of course it’s understandable that Alderman Shah wants to protect the convenience of his constituents, particularly when it comes to seniors who have concerns about having to travel an extra 1.4 miles,” Mayorga said. “But we will be providing transportation for the West River seniors.

“We understand it requires transition for these seniors. It’s one of the difficult choices we have to make in these difficult times.”

West River actually costs $3,300 less than Westville, or $39,875 a year, to run, according to Mayorga, although that doesn’t count the oil, gas, and electric bills incurred at West River. The real cost saving is the ability to combine both centers in the Westville space, she said.

A proposal to close Westville instead of West River came up for a vote at a recent meeting of the aldermanic Finance Committee. It failed. Hill Alderwoman Andrea Jackson-Brooks introduced it there.

Perez said he plans to re-introduce the same proposal at the Board of Aldermen’s full meeting Monday night, when the final budget will be voted on.

He argued that by the city’s own stated criteria — based on attendance and cost — West River, not Westville, should stay open. He said the city provided the aldermen with data that showed a slightly higher attendance at West River than at Westville. He argued that West River costs less to keep open, because he discounted the city’s argument that only Westville can accommodate both centers’ populations. Attendance is small enough at both centers that the combined populations can fit just fine at West River, Perez argued.

He also said he saw a letter from West River’s landlord offering to cut the rent $250 a month, which would further make West River the smarter center to keep open.

Westville “also has a lot of people from out of town,” Perez said.

The Westville center is rented from St. Aedan’s Church.

The city’s decision to keep Westville open “was not based on the criteria they gave us. Maybe it was politics” that drove it, Perez suggested.