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Due to a staff shortage at the Roswell Adult Center, 807 N. Missouri, the city of Roswell will be limiting its operations to one day a week starting next month, but it is determined to not close it down, Public Affairs Director Juanita Jennings said.
The Adult Center will be open from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Wednesdays starting Sept. 8 through the end of the year. Some classes and activities will be relocated. Video walking, aerobics and cardio exercise classes will be at the Roswell Recreation and Aquatic Center, 1402 W. College Boulevard, and the open-studio painting class will be at the Roswell Museum and Art Center, 1011 N. Richardson Ave. A lapidary class was rescheduled to Wednesdays at the Adult Center.
Billiards and dominoes will be available at the Adult Center on Wednesdays, and the Recreation Center will offer dominoes during its regular hours.
Jennings met with officers of the Adult Center Foundation on Wednesday to inform them of the changes.
“They did tell us what they were planning on doing but promised us that by October they would have a full schedule of classes and it would open in January,” Carolyn Mitchell, president of the Adult Center Foundation, said.
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“They have said they’re not closing the center permanently, and I’m going to take their word for it,” she said.
The foundation has a concern about the center’s future not just so senior citizens and other adults have a place to go for activities, but also because the foundation has invested money in equipment for the center.
The foundation purchased a $2,000 large-screen television and custom cabinet two years ago to be used by the photography club and purchased two of the center’s new pool tables for $5,000. The foundation has also provided new curtains for the stage, and equipment for yoga and other classes.
“We have supported every activity there as much as we were allowed to and requested to do over the years,” Mitchell said.
The foundation’s equipment purchases are also specific to the Adult Center, she said.
“That’s what’s in our bylaws. The money that came from our foundation is to support the center only. We didn’t want the TV moved to the aquatic center. It was bought for the photography club at the Adult Center,” she said.
Jennings reiterated the city intends to keep the center open in an interview Friday with the Roswell Daily Record.
“We don’t want to close it and we’re not closing it,” she said.
The city is dealing with staff shortages in many of its department, but the Adult Center is down to two staff members, Jennings said. On Friday, one of them called in sick, leaving one person to man the front desk from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m., she said. Jennings, who is also temporarily directing the recreation department, said she had to pull a staff member from the Recreation Center to cover the Adult Center employee’s lunch break.
Safety is the primary concern in reducing the Adult Center operations, she said.
“It’s not safe to have only one employee in a building by themselves. There were a lot of different variables that came into the decision, but safety of our staff is the utmost priority and safety of the people that are coming to a public building,” she said.
The city will be conducting a job fair Sept. 14 at the Roswell Convention Center, 912 N. Main, with the Roswell-Chaves County Economic Development Corp., and Jennings said it’s hoped that will result in more staff for the Adult Center and other departments. The city currently has 92 job openings, she said.
She said the city is hopeful the ending of federal unemployment benefits on Sept. 4 will help bring out more qualified job-seekers, but she said the city has seen a recent increase in applications that she attributed to the state’s mandate that workers in congregate settings such as hospitals, nursing homes and correctional facilities be vaccinated against COVID-19.
“I’ve been getting a lot of applications from people who are in the hospital industry and state employees, so I think that is helping,” she said.
“Our goal is we want to get back to pre-COVID operation, and that is really not just isolated to the Adult Center, that’s every department,” Jennings said.
Not everyone is convinced the city is making the effort to keep the Adult Center open, however. Beth Isler has taught a stained glass class at the Adult Center for years and Friday was to be its first class in a long time. Instead, though, she and her long-time regular students were packing up personal supplies and equipment to remove it from the Adult Center.
Jennings said the class had been canceled because it didn’t meet the requirement of 10 people enrolling in the class. She said sometimes exceptions will be made, such as for the lapidary class that had six people register and was rescheduled to Wednesdays.
Isler said generally she’s had four to six people in her classes but was able to find 10 for this session. However, one is in a hospital in Texas and another is quarantined with COVID-19.
She said she’s had difficulty communicating with the center’s staff and only knew the center was registering for classes again when she saw an ad in the Daily Record in April. She said she had been in contact with a staff member during the preceding months whom she told she was interested in teaching the stained glass class again but had never been contacted before the April ad appeared. She said she was told the city didn’t know how to reach her about having the class in the spring.
“I’m not leaving our stuff here,” she said Friday morning as she and several of her regular students packed supplies into plastic boxes and carted them outside to her pickup and trailer. She didn’t know where she would store it now, but said she would figure that out later.
“I’m leaving the city’s stuff here, but I’m not leaving our stuff here. I don’t believe what they say. I don’t think they’re opening this building back up,” she said.
Isler said she spoke at city meetings against the new recreation fee structure the city adopted in 2020 and put into effect at the beginning of the year.
Representatives of several groups that met at the Adult Center prior to the pandemic said at the June Parks and Recreation Commission meeting they would leave the Adult Center because of the higher rates, but at least one of those groups has temporarily returned.
The Adult Center Foundation’s Mitchell said the Pecos Valley Quilters was able to come to an agreement with the city to stay there through the end of the year. Mitchell is also a member of the guild.
The guild had met at the Adult Center for 35 years, paying $500 a year to meet once a week for seven hours. Under the new rates, that would cost them more than $14,500 a year.
But the group had paid its rent for 2020 and didn’t get to use the facility for most of the year because it was closed by the city under the state’s health order in March of that year.
“After a lot of discussions, they agreed to let us stay through December. After December, they’re going to enforce the rates that they had published, and our room is going to be $40 an hour for us to meet there, so we will be forced to move,” Mitchell said.
The Astronomy Club also relocated its meetings from the Adult Center due to the new fees, and a representative of tap dancing and line dancing groups said they would leave as well.
The new fees are part of the city’s cost recovery plans for facilities to be more self-sufficient. The Adult Center has a 50-50 cost recovery guideline, expected to earn half its operating costs from fees for equipment use, room rental and classes as well as donations or sponsorships. City Manager Joe Neeb said in a May General Services Committee meeting the Adult Center has operating costs of about $212,000 a year.
Isler and her students, though, think the city should consider the needs of residents.
“They’re pulling services away from the senior citizens,” Ruth Ann Brown said. “That’s part of city government is to provide these services for their citizens. That’s plain and simple.”
“I think that all citizens, especially senior citizens of Roswell, deserve to have a place to go and be creative,” Isler said.
City/RISD reporter Juno Ogle can be reached at 575-622-7710, ext. 205, or reporter04@rdrnews.com.
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