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Senior Center director fired over report

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Sherrie Anne Goldby, executive director of the Poway Senior Center, is on administrative leave this week pending termination because she objected to a recent consultant’s report that calls for drastic changes to center operations.

Jeff Figler, a spokesman for the Poway Valley Senior Citizens Corp., the board that hired Goldby two years ago, confirmed Tuesday night that her dismissal will become official within the next few days once the board finishes putting together a severance package.

“Mainly it’s because she didn’t get behind the board,” Figler said, noting that the board unanimously supports the consultant’s report. “She went against us and as her employer, she shouldn’t have done that.”

Board chair Lynn Bayne said that she believes Goldby’s intentions were good, but inappropriate because she didn’t recognize when the time came to stop and accept the board’s direction. Bayne also said that she does not question Goldby’s commitment to care for seniors and senior issues in any way.

The decision to dismiss Goldby, who is the wife of former City Councilman Jay Goldby, was made during a highly-charged meeting of the board last Thursday. Following the vote, two board members quit — America Evering and Jan Rubacky. Neither could be reached for comment as of press time.

Goldby was also unable to respond publicly about the board’s decision because she is under a gag order not to discuss the senior center, its members or the board for risk of losing her severance package.

In Goldby’s absence, center staffer Pat Palmer has been put in charge of day-to-day operations.

Goldby became the center’s executive director in November 2002 with a starting salary in the $40,000 range. She was unanimously chosen by the board from a field of 57 applicants, according to Poway News Chieftain archives.

The center’s executive director position has been plagued with an extremely high turnover rate. In fact, when Goldby was first hired for the position, she became the center’s fourth executive director in just three years. Her immediate predecessor Ed Brown resigned from the position following a confrontation with the board.

News of Goldby’s dismissal came on the heels of a vote by the Poway City Council Tuesday night to accept the consultant’s report and begin implementing many of the report’s recommendations. The city initiated the report last June after Goldby asked for city assistance to help solve financial problems that have plagued the nonprofit center for years.

The council’s decision was unanimous.

Mayor Mickey Cafagna said he is sorry that this issue has become so controversial and has created so much contentiousness.

“It shouldn’t have (been like this),” Cafagna told his colleagues during the meeting. “I believe we can make this work and we should move forward (with the report’s suggestions).”

Although Goldby was forbidden from commenting on the report Tuesday night, her objections include the fact that the report calls for employee layoffs and the fact that it suggests the center’s popular nutrition program should be contracted out as a county rather than community-based program. Other critics of the report have also said that some of its suggestions, such as increasing fund-raising activities and developing partnerships with local service clubs, have been tried by center volunteers in the past, but failed because of limited resources.

Councilman Don Higginson said that he sees no reason why things can’t be looked at for a second time because the community is constantly changing.

“There will always be issues at senior centers,” Higginson said. “This is not unique to Poway. There are issues that need to be addressed and addressed properly ... We need to get back and prioritize what we really can do.”

Under the proposal approved by the council Tuesday night, the city will now attempt to enter into a contract with DKC Associates to implement many of the report’s suggestions over the next six months. DKC Associates is the same group that compiled the report, and although Councilman Bob Emery raised the question whether hiring DKC a second time would be unethical, no action on that issue was taken. Emery said that he is hesitant to pay a company to fix problems that it was paid to find in the first place.

The council authorized City Manager Jim Bowersox to pay up to $60,000 to DKC to help the center’s problems.

The proposal also allows the center’s board to draw up to $10,000 per month from an endowment fund to cover operating costs through June while the issues in the report are being addressed. For the past seven months, the board has been allowed to draw $15,000 per month.

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