Key West may provide building for Boys and Girls Club headquarters

BY PRU SOWERS

KONK LIFE STAFF WRITER

Despite concerns over whether Key West City officials are giving preferential treatment to the local chapter of the Boys and Girls Club, commissioners voted unanimously Sept. 15 to move ahead with a plan to provide a permanent building for the child care organization.

Commissioners unanimously directed City Manager Jim Scholl to look into renovating a city-owned equipment building at Bayview Park and turning it over to the Club for use as its permanent headquarters. Currently, the Boys and Girls Club uses a portion of Reynolds School for its afterschool program, however, Monroe County School administrators have told the organization it will need to reclaim those school rooms for its own use in the near future.

The nonprofit organization, which provided summer programs for approximately 200 children this year, has been forced to move four times in the past 12 years. That lack of a permanent home has made it difficult for the local chapter to win state and local grants, according to Scholl and Boys and Girls Club Executive Director Dan Dombroski.

The Bayview Park building currently used to store softball equipment and city-owned maintenance tools is in bad shape and needs repairs no matter what use the building is eventually put to, said Commissioner Teri Johnston. But the cost of those repairs has been estimated to be as high as $500,000, according to city staff. And that concerned mayoral candidate Margaret Romaro.

“If we’re going to review the needs of the Boys and Girls Club, why aren’t we reviewing the needs of all the non-profits that serve our youth,” she asked. “That shows you’re only helping out a selected organization.”

Commissioner in May supported Romaro’s suggestion that the city create a more systematic method of fairly dividing the municipal donation pool to local non-profits. Currently, three local organizations receive substantial municipal contributions each year: $25,000 to the Boys & Girls Club, $30,000 to the “Idle Hands” summer youth job program, and $1,800 to the local chapter of the American Association of Retired People. But some commissioners have begun to question whether using taxpayers’ money to supplement the budgets of the three nonprofit organizations is fair when there are approximately 141 others operating in Key West.

Johnston said that renovating the 4,000 square foot building and turning it over to the Boys and Girls Club makes sense because the organization already has a lease with the city to use the park for some of its programs. She asked that a local architect donate services to create a plan to renovate the equipment building and then price the project out.

“Let’s have this conversation again with a budget in hand,” Johnston said.

Dombroski, the Club’s executive director, appeared to take the Commissioner’s support as a vote of confidence that the city will allow the Club to turn the building into its permanent headquarters.

“It’s making a dream come true for us. We’re so excited about it. We want to knock this out for the kids of this city,” he said after the vote.

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