San Ysidro Group Gets Recreation Center Use

The San Diego City Council, approving a compromise engineered by Mayor Maureen O’Connor, voted Monday to turn over operation of a city-owned recreation center in San Ysidro to Casa Familiar, a social service agency.

The vote leaves the larger and newly refurbished San Ysidro Boys’ Club, which Casa Familiar had been seeking to take over, in the hands of the city’s Park and Recreation Department.

The decision was a defeat for District 8 Councilman Bob Filner, whose district includes San Ysidro. Filner opposed giving up either facility to Casa Familiar because other community groups were not consulted and because the social service agency has yet to obtain the funding to operate the center.

“What we did was we said to a very successful recreation program that we’re changing the operators, without consulting any of the people involved,” Filner said.

But Casa Familiar leaders, who brought three busloads of supporters and a petition signed by 2,300 people to the council meeting, expressed satisfaction at the acquisition of the two recreation center buildings on Park Avenue.

“For what we wanted to do, for what the community needs . . . we think it’s a good solution,” said Andrea Skorepa, executive director of Casa Familiar. “Hopefully it will show everyone that San Ysidro intends to have its hand in its future.”

The conflict began last October, when the city requested proposals from agencies interested in running the Boys’ Club, which had been operated by the Park and Recreation Department since the city purchased it and volunteers refurbished the 14,000-square-foot building that had been devastated by vandals.

Casa Familiar was the only agency to apply, making a bid to expand the center’s programming beyond recreation and bring the facility under the control of a neighborhood which considers itself San Diego’s neglected stepchild.

The city manager’s office recommended in February that the council reject the agency’s application and allow the Park and Recreation Department to operate the facility permanently.

Casa Familiar intended to expand the recreation center to include counseling and social service programs, but Deputy City Manager Jack McGrory said in a report that the agency had no “specific funding source” and lacked the expertise to run a recreation program.

But Casa Familiar won the support of Mayor O’Connor, who forged the alternative solution approved Monday. “I think that before you take on the big facility, you should try the little facility and let us evaluate your performance,” O’Connor told Skorepa Monday.

The council agreed to the plan despite Casa Familiar’s lack of funding to operate the center. The agency has applied for a $277,000 grant from The United Way of San Diego County, which held up its decision to await the outcome of Monday’s vote, Skorepa said.

The Rev. John Blethen, director of social services for the Villa Nueva public housing project and a member of the United Way’s San Ysidro task force, said that Casa Familiar’s chances of receiving the money looked promising and urged the council to give it control of the recreation center.

Asked if his stands constituted a conflict of interest, Blethen replied: “I don’t know. I’ve thought about that . . . . Perhaps it is a conflict.”

Skorepa said that Casa Familiar intends to leave the senior center now located in one building of the recreation center and expand the programming being offered in the second, larger building.

If the agency is not allocated money by the United Way, she said, “We’ll do what we always do. We’ll figure out some way to do it.”