Seniors Voice City Finance Concerns During Workshop

City Staff, council members hear loud and clear from senior community

The City of Elk Grove held it's second district-specific fiscal workshop last Thursday night at the Elk Grove Senior Center.

Located is District 5, which is represented by council person Sophia Scherman, the audience was almost exclusively made up of active members of the Senior Center.

Discussing how the sources of the city revenues and corresponding expenses was city manager Laura Gill who said the purposes of the city-wide meetings is to seek input and ideas from citizens. Council member Scherman, Jim Cooper, Pat Hume and Steve Detrick also attended the meeting.

Gill acknowledged the current economic challenges and said because the city is a contract city there would no likely job or service cuts, but noted there will be challenges.

"There are things we are going to have to do," Gill said.

Many of the audience members urged the city to continue it's financial support of the senior center and the broad array of services provided by the volunteer staff.

Senior Center volunteer Bob Turner told Gill and the council members if they cut funding to the organization "you are going to have a lot of sad people."

One person in the audience who did not identify herself as a member of the center expressed the belief that give current economic conditions executive city staff wages were to high and characterized their retirement benefits as "platinum."

"Six figure salaries are way to much," Elk Grove resident Linda Beattie said. "Please don't raise our fees on anything," she added.