Middletown has spent more than $1 million in the past five years to fund operations at the Robert “Sonny” Hill Community Center in the city’s South End. Hamilton has spent more than $700,000 from the city’s coffers and from federal grants to keep open the Booker T. Washington Community Center in the 2nd Ward.
Some have questioned the expenses in a time when both cities have made cuts in safety services, including police and fire.
Cuts are always a sensitive topic for some, and services like the golf course, the airport and the community center come up, said Middletown councilman A.J. Smith.
“Everybody knows the times are tough and the funds are dwindling,” said the 23-year-old Smith, who was a regular at the center in his youth. “But I don’t want to see the community center closed, and the people who use the community center don’t want to see it closed.”
Others say closing the facilities would be disastrous to the surrounding neighborhoods to the community centers.
“A lot of prosperous people have been through that community center,” said Ceal Thompson, known affectionately as Ms. Ceal by the youth and adults who visited the community center on Lafayette Road for the past 44 years.
Thompson retired this summer as the center’s director, a position she had held since 2000.
“It’s saving a lot of our kids, it’s saving adults, also,” she said. “All of Middletown is not there at the community center, but it fits in a vacancy that the kids and some adults have.”
Many who have utilized the Booker T. Washington center and its programs over the years have called it the “Miracle on Front Street” because its provides a safe place for senior citizens to gather and for more than 200 youth of all ages to learn, grow and be nurtured.
Regina Phillips, who has served as the center’s director on a volunteer basis for the past 18 months, said there are 14 different programs being delivered on a shoestring budget of about $10,000 a year, much of it used to pay part-time employees such as lifeguards. Phillips described the center as “a safety net that meets the needs of children and the community.”
She was paid the first year by the city, but when budget had to be tightened, Phillips has continued her role on a volunteer basis.
There were 91 youth that participated in the center’s summer program in which they were fed three times a day with breakfast, lunch and an afternoon snack thanks to donations from local restaurants and the Shared Harvest Food Bank, Phillips said.
Earlier this year, Hamilton City Manager Joshua Smith proposed to City Council to remove the administrative oversight from the nonprofit Booker T. Washington Community Center Association’s board of directors and have it focus solely on policymaking and identifying potential programming.
Smith said the recommendation was made in an effort to improve the center’s sustainability in the next two years.
“Council feels this is a community asset and needs to be treated as such,” Smith said. “The center is for the use of the entire community.
The city owns the facility, which also houses Hamilton’s last city-owned swimming pool, leases the facility to the association for $1 a year under the current agreement that ends on Dec. 31.
In addition, the city also furnishes all utilities, lawn care, basic phone service and most maintenance. It is also responsible for major structural repairs and maintenance including the heating, ventilation and air conditioning, the indoor pool, athletic fields and playgrounds.
All other operational costs are the responsibility of the association.
Smith’s recommendation also included creating an ad hoc committee to interview potential agencies to work with the association’s board and would need the involvement of the Hamilton City Schools, local churches and pastors, and Miami University Hamilton.
He said when there is tangible progress being made in the center’s programming, more community funding will flow into the center. In addition, a better organized community center would achieve several objectives in the city’s strategic plan.
For a number of years, the community center at 1140 S. Front St. has been the center of controversy for Hamilton city officials and community leaders in the 2nd and 4th Wards.
However, while both sides seem to want the same things, there is a difference of opinion on how the center at 1140 S. Front St. should be managed, financed and programmed.
The latest controversy revolved around the use of the center in July for an after-party for adults. The center’s board agreed to allow a fellow board member free use of the center as a community service to the community event that the board member sponsored earlier that day. The board member engaged the services of an event promoter who posted what was later deemed inappropriate advertising along with a swimsuit competition on the Internet that was not cleared by the center’s board.
Mayor Pat Moeller and other council members felt the ad put the center and the city in a bad light. Moeller has said the center cannot not continue to operate as business as usual. No action has been taken by the city as of this week.
During the school year the center is open from 3 to 8 p.m. and youths have to participate in the mandatory Homework Club everyday that tutors children in reading, math and science. In addition, there is a music program, arts and crafts, a young leaders club to encourage youths to give back to the community and a “hip-hop institute.”
The center also provides a shuttle van from the schools back to the center so that youths that play sports have ride back long after the school buses stop running for the day.
“The center is a surrogate home for children and sometimes we have to make them leave so we can lock up for the night,” Phillips said. “If the weather is bad, the kids won’t go home.”
The center focuses a lot of resources on youth programs, it also hosts adult and elderly programs such as a young mens basketball league, line dancing, senior adult exercise programs, GED programing, a weekly senior mens basketball league, water aerobics and senior exercise programs in the mornings.
“We’re open to the entire community and we’re getting a lot of people from throughout the community as we are becoming multicultural now,” she said.
“In spite of dollar amounts, we get a tremendous amount of results,” she said.
Phillips said the center needs to hire a full-time executive director, a program director, and an administrative assistant as well as some part-time workers including three to four program workers, a janitor and a kitchen person. She said the facility is also in need of new sports and exercise equipment as well as an updated computer for its computer lab. Other items that are needed are kitchen equipment and arts and crafts supplies.
Bob Harris, president of the South East Civic Association, served as an interim center director in the 1990s, said a full-time executive director, program director and an accountant are desperately needed. He also said there is a need for an active board to oversee the center and if someone isn’t getting the job done, they should be let go.
As a young man, Harris said the center was “the place to go to because there was always activities at the center and programs for everyone.” Harris taught a photography camp at the center over the summer and said youths want to learn as well as seeking attention and discipline.
“The whole community needs to find a way to uplift, teach, guide and direct these kids,” he said. “We need to give them good principles and morals to live by so that they can teach their kids to be productive.”
At a recent board meeting to discuss the July incident, Perry Shazier II said more could be done by the community to ensure the center was successful.
“This hurts the core of me because I grew up here,” he said. “This center saved my life. We need more testimonials and if we’re not doing this, then sham on us. We’re talking about lives here.”
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