South Ogden City Council votes to sell senior center, old city hall building
SOUTH OGDEN — The South Ogden City Council voted to sell the old city hall and senior center, signaling the end of the South Ogden Senior Center and leaving the future of a sexual assault examination nonprofit up in the air.
The council voted 3-2 on Tuesday evening to approve the ordinance. Before the vote, there was talk to surplus only the old city hall building and not the senior center, but council members did not amend the ordinance and later voted in favor of the measure.
Councilman Brent Strate argued there are better facilities for nearby seniors, and there is a plan in place to get people to senior centers that are farther away.
Councilwoman Sallee Orr said that the number of senior citizens is projected to increase in Weber County within the next 20 years and argued that closing a senior center would have a negative impact on the community.
Councilwomen Orr and Susan Stewart voted against the ordinance, while councilmen Strate, Adam Mike Hensley and Howard voted in favor of it.
After the vote, Kevin Eastman, director of Weber Human Services, said WHS will hold a meeting with seniors to give details and help with the transition for people to use new senior facilities.
City Manager Matthew Dixon said recently the senior center and the adjacent old city hall will need $217,000 in major maintenance, including roofing and heating and air conditioning, in the next three years. Officials hope to avoid that expense and gain another $800,000 or more from selling the property.
City officials presented figures from Weber Human Services, which operates the senior center, showing that meals delivered have fallen 38 percent since their peak in 2009.
Sixty people attend at least one event at the South Ogden Center each week, compared to 350-400 at the Golden Hours Center in Ogden and 200 or more at the Washington Terrace center, officials said.
The approval of the ordinance also leaves the Northern Utah Sexual Assault Nurse Examiners nonprofit up in the air. N
USANE is a team of 12 on-call nurses that performs sexual assault exams from a facility based in the old city hall building.
Before the vote, Strate said the organization was a great service that the council wants to continue to support and said South Ogden’s mayor, Russell Porter, has spent hours trying to come up with a solution to place NUSANE in a new home.
It was not immediately clear whether the city has an immediate plan in place to move NUSANE or where the organization will go now that the city has voted to sell the old city hall building.
Jacob Scholl is the Cops and Courts Reporter for the Standard-Examiner. Email him at jscholl@standard.net and follow him on Twitter at @Jacob_Scholl.