Hernando Today
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City To Explore Partnership With Enrichment Center
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Published: August 26, 2008
BROOKSVILLE - The Jerome Brown Community Center could one day be the new home of the Hernando County Enrichment Center - and a hurricane shelter for special needs residents.
The city council came to a unanimous consensus Monday night to explore whether the Jerome Brown Community Center, built to provide programs for local children, could also accommodate the enrichment center and its programs geared for all ages but used mainly by area seniors.
Council members agreed the partnership would hinge on what the costs to the city would be and whether the Jerome Brown Community Center can be retrofitted as storm shelter.
Vice mayor Frankie Burnett said he felt confident it would and that the cost to the city would be bearable.
"Let's go into a partnership with such a great program," Burnett said.
"This is something we really, really need," council member Lara Bradburn said of the special needs shelter.
The enrichment center is trying to figure out a way to cut costs and at the same time realize plans born years ago to find a new location that would double as an emergency shelter for the elderly, infirm and disabled, Enrichment Center Director Debbie Druzbick told the council
The enrichment center currently operates about a mile away in Brooks Plaza on U.S. 41. It costs the center about $62,000 a year to operate there, Druzbick said.
"We're just looking for a new home that's a little more cost effective," she said.
And the enrichment center, which also has a location at Oak Hill Hospital, would bring money to pay for the shelter retrofit. The center has $600,000 in state funding and $100,000 from the county to build a new center that would function as a shelter, or retrofit an existing building. The criteria for a shelter are a commercial kitchen, a hardened structure and a generator, Druzbick said.
The enrichment center also brings in money each year to help cover operating costs by charging $15 annual memberships to those who can afford them.
City Parks and Recreation Director, who was not present at Monday's meeting, is consulting a contractor to find out whether the building could be hardened, City Manager Jennene Norman-Vacha said.
The enrichment center must submit a plan to the state by Nov. 1 outlining how it will spend the $600,000.
Council member Joe Bernardini said the city's parks and recreation board approved of exploring the idea as long as the plan didn't infringe on the children's programs, which are mainly in the afternoons.
Druzbick said most of the enrichment center's programs are over by 4 p.m. and that the center could be flexible with that time.
Mayor David Pugh said the key will be whether the foundation of the building is up to the retrofit, something that could be determined by the next council meeting, he said.
The enrichment center board had planned to build a new center/shelter at Oak Hill Hospital. But the board began looking for other options when the hospital indicated it would rather wait to renew the contract with the center closer to the end date in 2011.
Physician Is Great Brooksvillian
The council unanimously selected Dr. Paul Farmer as the 2008 Great Brooksvillian.
Farmer was raised in Brooksville and earned valedictorian honors as part of Hernando High School's Class of 1978.
He is now an anthropologist and a physician with a specialty in infectious diseases currently working as professor of medical anthropology at Harvard and also works as attending physician at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. Farmer is co-founder of the nonprofit "Partners in Health," which works to provide free health care to poor residents in Haiti.
The other nominee, B.R. Raju, a former chief of staff for Brooksville Regional Hospital, was among the first physicians to provide cardiac care in Hernando County. Raju's nomination paperwork was incomplete, a selection committee member told the council.
Farmer will be recognized in October during Brooksville's Founders Week.
Reporter Tony Marrero can be reached at 352-544-5286 or lmarrero@hernandotoday.com.
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