City council to consider $36,000 grant for senior center food program

WASILLA — Assuming there’s a quorum for tomorrow night’s Wasilla Council meeting, City Hall will likely be filled with angry seniors fed up with the way their senior center is being run.

On the agenda for the 6 p.m. meeting is an ordinance proposing another $36,000 grant for the Wasilla Area Senior Center Inc., to support the non-profit organization’s food service program.

The meeting — which also includes approving a site for a new library across from Iditarod Elementary School, adopting a trash and junk ordinance, and discussing the city’s new Comprehensive Plan — was scheduled originally for last Monday. But that meeting was canceled because there weren’t at least four of the six council members available to meet to make a quorum.

Since then, the atmosphere at the Wasilla Senior Center has become even more tense as news of possible grant mismanagement by Executive Director Sondra Kaplan made the front page of Friday’s Frontiersman.

Sheila Walker, WASI’s former programs development director, alleges she was fired by Kaplan at the end of October because she told the board of directors Kaplan had asked her to break the law by charging various WASI expenses to grant funds meant for other purposes.

Kaplan has denied the allegations, but several WASI members have expressed support for Walker, saying they’ve been upset for awhile now over the way Kaplan has managed the senior center.

The last straw for the seniors was when Kaplan suddenly cut operating hours at the fitness center shortly after WASI received a $135,000 grant for the fitness program from the Mat-Su Health Foundation.

“Sondra thinks she can do whatever she wants and that she doesn’t have to answer to anybody,” Walker said last week. “She’s not really even qualified to hold that position. If it weren’t for my help straightening out WASI’s finances over the past two years, that place would be in much worse shape. The unfortunate thing is, it looks like it’s heading back into the hole because of the decisions being made by Sondra.”

Walker is appealing her termination.

At least two council members already have expressed reservations about approving the grant since becoming aware of the controversy brewing over alleged grant mismanagement and Kaplan’s “intimidation tactics” at the center.

Councilwoman Taffina Katkus said Friday she doesn’t think the city should be in the grant business in the first place.

“It’s not our money to spend,” Katkus said. “Even if all was well and good at WASI, it’s irresponsible for us to appropriate funds when we’re working with a ‘projected’ budget balance and don’t have a clear picture yet of what we actually have to spend.”

Second-term Councilwoman Dianne Woodruff said Friday evening she wants to hear what WASI members have to say before she agrees to the grant, which would be paid in $3,000 chunks each month over a year and requires detailed expenditure reports from WASI each month.

“I don’t want to accuse WASI of mismanagement or of using funds inappropriately, but I do wonder what’s going on over there,” Woodruff said.

Woodruff said she sat in on a WASI Board of Directors meeting Thursday morning just out of curiosity and felt a strange vibe from Kaplan when she and two seniors entered the room.

“It felt like she really didn’t want us there,” she said. “And when community activist Anne Kilkenny tried to attend, they first sent her out so they could check their bylaws to see if it was OK for a non-member to attend a board meeting. After they told her she could attend if she bought a membership, she agreed. It was a little odd to have that much scrutiny to come and sit and observe a meeting.”

Woodruff said she was hoping to get a better idea of the board’s goals and objectives during their Thursday meeting, but it was mostly run by Kaplan with very little questioning by board members.

She said former Palmer District Court Judge Beverly Cutler, who only recently joined the board, seemed to be the only one speaking up about the change in hours at the Fitness Center.

“Judge Cutler asked some very thoughtful questions,” Woodruff said. “One of them was about the gym hours and why they couldn’t open it back up in the mornings, as requested by many seniors. Sondra said it was because the gym staff couldn’t be available then. That didn’t make sense to me because their fitness trainer, Karla Atwood, never had trouble being there in the morning before.”

Woodruff and seniors present at the meeting said Kaplan appointed WASI Marketing Manager Diana Straub to serve as the “Health and Wellness Therapy Manager” and moved her into the gym in an area previously reserved for massages and private consultations with clients.

Kaplan recently fired Atwood’s assistant, making it more difficult for the two-time Alaska bodybuilding champion to run her program effectively.

The WASI board agreed Thursday to spend $3,000 to bring up another fitness trainer from Seattle, which only further riled some members.

“I’m curious as to the line of reasoning to justify spending money to bring up another trainer when Karla is the most highly-trained fitness expert in the state when the hours of the gym had to be cut ‘for budgetary reasons,’ ” senior Elsie O’Bryan said. “Even if there were legitimate budgetary constraints on the gym at WASI, a competent administrator doesn’t repeatedly alter the schedule without consultation with the clientele affected and the manager of the department.”

Contact K.T. McKee at kate.McKee@frontiersman.com or 352-2252.