Milan City, Senior Center struggle to negotiate contract

Milan City and the Milan Seniors for Healthy Living’s contract expired in July 2024. 

After years of annual negotiations, the city said during its Feb. 4 meeting it would like to agree on a five-year contract to clarify the roles of both the city and the senior center. However, both parties have struggled to come to consensus. 

At stake is the use of the senior millage – about $105,000 collected annually from Milan City taxpayers — and what costs the city covers vs. the Milan Seniors for Healthy Living. In addition, some city leaders would like the townships to support the Center, which is used by all residents in the 48160 zip code.

Hard questions

Mayor Pro Tem Shannon Wayne said she believes by asking important questions they ensure a strong program for the seniors and a healthy relationship between the entities going forward. 

“Politics isn’t always easy,” Wayne told The Sun Times News. “In fact, when it is easy it is generally because handling hard questions was deferred.”

Senior director’s concerns

However, Milan Seniors for Healthy Living is concerned that means the city wants them to have a tenant relationship regarding use of the senior center, utilities and commodities. They believe this could have significant implications for senior programming.

The center’s executive director MaryAnn Opal spends much of her time applying for grants and raising funds for programs like Meals on Wheels and Aging in Action. But, she said, as the current climate reveals, that type of funding can be unpredictable. What’s more, she said the city built the Center specifically for the seniors and the millage was put on the ballot by the seniors, who went to every house in Milan campaigning. It passed by a 76 percent majority. She said that the seniors for Healthy Living also put in the work for the successful millage renewal.

Since around when the original millage was passed, Opal said, the city has reduced support progressively in each negotiation. 

“Now we’re down to the bigger ticketed items and I just from the bottom of my heart cannot feel right about doing that,” Opal said. “As the executive director, if I negotiate paying rent and utilities that will never be reversed. … I feel almost a moral obligation to the seniors to advocate for them.”

Current costs

Currently the city pays about $55,000 annually to maintain and support the senior center, according to Wayne and Mayor Ed Kolar. They take $27,000 from the senior millage to go toward city costs before turning the remaining $78,000 over to the seniors for programming. In addition to providing the building, the city pays for utilities, maintenance and commodities.

In addition, Kolar is concerned that while the city pays for the Center, “50 percent of the users of the senior center live in the townships.” He’d like the townships to help pay costs and better advertise the programs to the seniors in all the 48160 zip code.

“If we don’t have to foot the bill of everything we would love to expand,” Kolar said. “We have the room. The message isn’t getting out to the townships that they’re welcome, but financially I think they need to help us as they do with the fire [department]. It should be a shared program.”

Legal opinion

City Attorney Steve Mann said the city has options.

“I think that would be equitable [to have the townships pay],” Mann agreed, adding, “I think legally you could spend [the millage] on the general community, though, if you wanted to.”

Council response

Mostly councilmembers listened and asked questions.

Councilmember Dave Snyder suggested ways to make the contract reflect more of a tenant-landlord relationship, suggested the city better market the Center for rentals to offset maintenance costs, and said there might be value in asking for township support. However, he also said that they wouldn’t want to do anything to make township residents feel the Center was not for them – and acknowledged how tricky shared funding can be.

“We offer a lot of programs that operate at a loss,” Snyder said. “Our parks operate at a loss. Certainly, we spend more on mowing and maintaining those parks and likewise those parks are used by those around us, without limiting them to those who live and pay taxes here in Milan. This is the community center they come to. We hope that they’ll spend money in our stores and we’ll benefit from that.”

Councilmember Mary Kerkes said that by making the Center available to the township residents it is also supporting city residents.

“I think it’s incredibly important that we maintain a safe, comfortable facility for the township seniors, also. Often they are related to people in town,” she said. “It’s very important to the people who are paying that tax, but I think we need to find out a way to make it equitable.”

Kerkes and Thompson both said they would like to see the financial statements for the nonprofit, something Opal said is provided monthly at the board meetings attended by Wayne, who is the council’s rep on the senior board.

History

In 1990 the city of Milan decided to build the senior center in Wilson Park, despite opposition from two councilmembers, including one councilman who said he was “unwilling to spend a million dollars on a Senior Citizens Center that will serve 25 people,” as quoted in The Milan News on July 11, 1990.

Despite some initial opposition, the senior program continued to grow, under the parks and recreation department. 

Then in 2008, the city had a $200,000 budget shortfall, according to an article in the Milan Area Leader from March 25, 2010, and was considering cutting the parks and rec department, including the senior program, to balance its budget. In an effort to save the senior center Jennifer Michalak, who served as director for the senior center prior to Opal, suggested making it a nonprofit.

Milan’s City council voted unanimously to make its senior program a 501C(3) nonprofit on Monday March 22, 2010, to “reduce expenses,” and make the program more eligible for public and private grants to “reduce and eventually eliminate its dependence on funding by the city,” according to the Milan Area Leader 2010 article.  It was hoped that it would become a “successful public/private partnership,” according to Michalak in the article.

Wayne quotes the article where the city manager says: “the city hoped that direct city support would decrease over time and by the 2014-15 year the center was expected to be self-supporting and could even provide revenue to the city, which would rent the city’s facilities to support senior center programs.”

Millage years

Former Milan Mayor Mike Armitage said becoming a nonprofit did not make the funding sustainable, which is why the seniors advocated to get the millage on the ballot in 2015 while he was serving as mayor.

He said even back then there were different opinions about how much of the millage should be spent to help up-keep the facility.

“We negotiated with Milan Seniors for Healthy Living, and in that process added [Councilmember Dominic Hamden as] a city council rep to their board to improve communication,” he said.

Still, Armitage said he doesn’t consider a small contribution from the general fund to support the senior center to be a loss. 

“I believe it is appropriate to pay some building costs from the millage, but they should be proportional to the actual usage. I believe the city and its residents are lucky to have Milan Seniors for Healthy Living with the vibrant and needed services they provide. I never approached the operation of the building as being a ‘cost neutral’ endeavor for the city. It is clear that it was not intended to be from its building and inception.”

Kolar and Wayne ended the council discussion by providing councilmembers with four years of profit losses for the senior center to review before future discussion.

To learn more, watch the full council discussion on the city website and read Cassidy Jenkins article in The Sun Times News about some of the programs available at the Milan Seniors for Healthy Living.