Critical of fun bus policy

To the Editor,

As a senior citizen of the Village of Richfield and past village council member, I am writing about an inequity in the senior center operations. There is a “fun bus” that seats 14 so that a CDL license is not needed for our short trips. The current policy is that anyone from any community can sign up to ride that bus on any trips planned by our senior center. They do need to be a member of our senior center, which is only $15 for a whole year. What the policy causes is that our own citizens often are only getting a few of the available seats. The mayor, council and the senior center commission support this policy. I have asked for the first one or two days of trip sign-ups to be open exclusively for our village residents who own the bus and provide this wonderful service through the property taxes we pay (and they don’t). We have seniors who live in other counties who can go, and we are not permitted to even join the senior program in the towns where they live. Please contact the council, mayor and/or senior center to help support at least one or two days for our village seniors to be able to have one of the 14 seats. This request seems like an easy request to support but it has not been.

Patricia HealeyHawkins Road