The Rustcraft Proposal: A more intelligent option

   I for one think that the Rustcraft proposal is a very good one, but I think it could be tweeked to bring the Town some revenue in return. What I mean by this is the Senior Citizens in this town clearly don't want to go to Rustcraft Road. There is no bus line and many of them don't drive or count on relatives to get around. I proposed this solution to the Board of Selectman.
   My suggestion is we take the Senior Center and move it into Town Hall once all of those Departments are moved out. We could move all the core services that relate to seniors into that building and refurbish it for a senior center and the seniors can have a one stop shop for everything they need.
   I further suggested that we take the space allotted for the senior center and put a recreation center there. As good as the Dolan Center is they are very limited to what they can do there. They can build a basketball court and some exercise class rooms and they could run leagues there and rent the court to Dedham Youth Basketball, CYO basketball, Metro West Basketball and any other program that could benefit from it and have more space to do addition pathfinders activities as well. You could use the class space for Karate, Yoga, Pilates and offer a wealth of different things we don't offer now, you could even rent the space for Birthday parties and we could use that revenue to possibly offer other services around town that we don't now and maybe give the people the bang for there buck there taxes don't give them now.
   To go back to the Seniors, not only do you give them a centralized location, but if the businesses offer a senior citizen discount this could be a revenue stream for the businesses that are being strapped by the parking hike. The seniors would also have parking there so parking in the square is not a concern. 
   This would be a win win for the town if they were smart enough to look into it. I think this is a great idea. Norwood has a recreation center and they benefit greatly from it. Please read this and please email the selectman office like I did and echo this suggestion. The whole town can benefit from this tweak.