Copyright Salt Lake Tribune
First, the Republicans on the Salt Lake County County Council voted to close county-subsidized day care. Then they voted to close a Salt Lake City senior center. In the sixth hour of a Tuesday council meeting — hours after hearing from parents angry about the day care closures — the five-member Republican majority took aim at the Tenth East Senior Center. Council member Aimee Winder Newton, after saying that “these senior centers are so important,” argued that deferred maintenance on the Tenth East facility and other buildings costs the county “a fortune.” “I’d love to see a world where the cities that these senior centers are located … buy the building from us, and we run the program,” Winder Newton said. She pushed to close the Tenth East center, which has been closed since September for a remodeling project, because it’s is less than 2 miles from the Liberty Senior Center, also in Salt Lake City. “I know this community is going to be so angry about this,” Winder Newton said. According to a news release from Tom Hudachko, the council’s senior policy advisor, the county has already spent $3 million on its rebuilding the center. The full project was set to cost $10 million, which council members unanimously voted to fund in 2022, the news release stated. If the county stops the project now and closes the center, the release said “it will result in millions of taxpayers’ dollars being completely wasted.” Salt Lake County Mayor Jenny Wilson said during the meeting, “I don’t know of a time at the county we have ever reversed a decision like this.” During the meeting, Winder Newton said closing the Tenth East center would save the county $400,000 annually in ongoing costs. It would also save millions that the county had devoted to the rebuilding project, she added. Council member Jiro Johnson, whose district includes the senior center, said closing it would be “pulling the rug out from underneath the people who rely” on it. “We voted to renovate this,” he said. “We advertised to this population as of September that it’s going to be coming back in 18 months.” Johnson stressed that the center serves Salt Lake County’s aging population in need of nutrition assistance and social opportunities. Johnson also predicted the council will hear from upset constituents, much as it did over the day care closures. “We’re going to get more emails, from a different group of people,” he said. A few hours earlier, council members turned aside motions to reconsider the closure of four county-subsidized day care programs. Dozens of concerned county residents attended the meeting and spoke about how they rely on those centers. Council member Ross Romero took issue that his Republican colleagues considered voting to close the senior center without first gathering public input, the same tactic they used before voting to defund the day care centers. “I am concerned about the way we seem to be doing business,” he said. Despite concerns from Democratic council members, the Republicans on the panel won the vote to close the center 5-4. The closure isn’t final until the council approves the entire 2026 budget.
