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Girard center is still going strong
Photo
From left, Evelyn Myers, 75, of Girard; Marilyn Kobal, 78, of Girard; Teresa Sidoti, of Niles, who refused to give her age; and Paul O’Connor, 74, of Liberty, exercise before attending a Medicare seminar at the Girard Multi-Generational Center. Oct. 18 will mark the center’s 10th anniversary, but the facility awaits a crucial, 1.8-mill renewal levy vote in November.
Girard
Just over 10 years ago, the light-brown school building in the south-side neighborhood of Parkwood was all but ready to be vacated for a new, centrally located school.
But the neighborhood fought the city on the issue, and 10 years later, the building still serves the young and old as the Girard Multi-Generational Center.
“Out of the need for [the school district] to pass the levy to build a new school and [for the neighborhood] to make sure this building did not turn into an eyesore, we were born,” said Laura Carey- D’Rummo, the center’s administrative director.
Throughout the decade, various grants and private donations have helped keep the center running. But since 2007, two-thirds of the funding has come from a 1.8-mill city levy that passed in 2007.
And as the center gets ready for its 10th anniversary celebration Oct. 18, it also prepares for November when the five-year levy’s renewal will be up to the voters.
“We have a lot of support,” said Carey-D’Rummo. “Between the people that come here and their friends and neighbors, we just really need them to come out and vote.”
She said the center provides education, fitness and assitance via Judith Signiorello, who is both a registered nurse and social worker and who helps navigate the often confusing channels of Medicare. But most importantly to Signiorello, it creates a haven for social interaction.
“The socialization, I believe, is what keeps them going,” she said. “It gives them a reason to get up in the morning.”
The center has interns, high-school volunteers and Head Start students who are “fresh ears” for the senior citizens’ stories, Carey-D’Rummo said.
The center also has had training classes for police, and students use the computer lab because it is closer than the city’s library.
“If that levy doesn’t pass, we wouldn’t be able to stay in operation the way that we are,” Carey-D’Rummo said.
In 1999, the school district wanted to close the Parkwood intermediate school and build a new one but needed a levy to pay for it.
City Councilman Charlie Lamancusa, dubbed by some as Mayor of Parkwood, created a deal where if the levy passed, the district would lend the building to a new community center.
The levy passed, but Lamancusa never saw what the center would turn out to be. On Feb. 4, 2000, Lamancusa was shot and killed outside of the business he owned and operated.
“He was the heart and soul of this neighborhood,” Carey-D’Rummo said. “When the steel mills closed and people were out of work, nobody ever went hungry. He fed everybody. And there were tabs that were probably never paid.”
For its first seven years, the center ran off a two-year $2.6 million federal grant and other pilot-project grants that were non-renewal. So the center turned to the city for the levy, which brings in $230,000 a year and funds only the senior services and facilities
Before November 2007, the center began to sell off items at auction to raise money.
“We were down to no paychecks for a couple of weeks at the very end,” Signiorello said.
The levy passed, and now Carey-D’Rummo and those that use the center are the ones urging residents to vote again.
Girard Mayor James Melfi, who co-chairs the center’s levy committee, said the center provides stability to a low-to-moderate-income area. Despite the center’s levy appearing on the ballot with three other levies, he is confident the city will support it.
“It passed last time,” Melfi said. “And new levies are hard to pass, but it did.”