LETTER: Younger city residents need to speak up on new adult center

To Ozaukee Press:

As Ozaukee Press readers may already know, the City of Port Washington owns and operates the Adult Community Senior Center, located at 403 W. Foster St. The services and activities offered by the center are numerous and varied. The current location, however, is a converted church in a residential area that is not conducive to enhancing or expanding the curriculum that could be offered to the center’s members.

One of Mayor Ted Neitzke’s campaign pledges before the election was to take care of our seniors. That pledge included reviewing the senior center location, its building and its programs, and possibly improving all.

To honor this pledge, Mayor Neitzke created a committee in June that has been evaluating potential locations, funding options and programs offered if a new facility were built. To better understand the seniors’ needs, our committee held three listening sessions at the senior center, two in June and one in July.

During these data gathering efforts, it became very clear that our city needs a facility and programs that serve multiple age groups—young and old—to fully enhance the quality of life of its members.

All information compiled so far has been passed on to architects, who are beginning to develop a preliminary design. However, this is just a start. We still need to hear from younger people to ensure that we capture everyone’s wants and needs, and we build a new facility that is meant to serve multiple generations for decades to come.

To begin gathering information from younger residents, the city kicked off an online survey that was distributed through various media sites. To date, there have been 178 responses. That is a very small percentage in a city of 12,853 residents.

We want to hear from you.

The online survey will be available until Dec. 15. Please go to the city’s website —www.portwashingtonwi.gov. Click on the “Press Release” notification on the home page to complete the survey. Your valuable input is critical to serving the residents of all ages in the city of Port Washington.

Alderwoman Deb Postl

Ward 1

Port Washington